


Bright Eyes

by heylifeitsemily



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Multi, one of those kids is a spirit, sometimes a family has 6 dads 5 moms and 2 kids, teenquisitor, who doesn't love teen!quisitor
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-08
Updated: 2017-11-21
Packaged: 2018-09-22 20:20:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 43,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9623921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heylifeitsemily/pseuds/heylifeitsemily
Summary: The cloth on her left shoulder is singed, revealing the shine of recently healed burns underneath it, and a criss-cross of small scars and bits of rubble sit embedded in her right cheek, having taken the brunt of her fall out of the Fade. She attempts to sit at attention when she speaks, but her words carry a wince each time, and she returns to a slouch.A cornered animal, Cassandra could deal with. A wounded one, and moreover one with no fight left in it, is wholly out of her realm of expertise.





	1. First Impressions

Leliana had struggled years ago to find the balance between that which is right and that which needed to be done. Years of service as the Divine’s Left Hand had allowed her to perfect it, the delicate manipulation of friend and foe and the careful consideration of what, in most cases, amounted to the lesser of two evils. Impassivity was a practiced skill, and one she had become proficient at.

Some days, however, proved to be more of a challenge than others.

The prisoner was dragged in, unable to find her own footing in her half-conscious state, and thrown to the ground unceremoniously with an understandable if excessive degree of venom. The extent of her injuries was not entirely known, and the apostate had dealt with the most severe ones as best he could. It was ordered, under instruction from Leliana herself, that the lesser wounds retain some measure of pain and remain visible. Pain can act as a useful motivator, if need be.

It is … difficult, seeing her now, healed but only half so, biting her lip to keep tears from spilling down her cheeks and breath coming in purposeful huffs, as though she has to will her lungs to expand with each inhale.

She does not remember anything from the Conclave’s explosion, she does not know the origin or purpose of the mark on her hand, she will try to help if she can. Leliana can find none of the skepticism necessary in her line of work, simply leaves and allows Cassandra to hoist the girl up and lead her outside.

* * *

Cassandra has questioned teenagers before, encountered a fair number of rowdy, intemperate youth with no regard for the severity of the matter at hand, focused on boastful indifference and outright antagonism rather than cooperative resolution. Though she is too sensible of her faults to discount their stubbornness and too familiar with battle to denounce the lashing out of a cornered animal, she nevertheless grows impatient with such hostility, and is prone to respond in kind.

It is what she resorts to now, but it does nothing to assuage the heaviness of her steps as she lunges threateningly towards the girl kneeling in front of them, cuffed and straining to follow the line of interrogation. The cloth on her left shoulder is singed, revealing the shine of recently healed burns underneath it, and a criss-cross of small scars and bits of rubble sit embedded in her right cheek, having taken the brunt of her fall out of the Fade. She attempts to sit at attention when she speaks, but her words carry a wince each time, and she returns to a slouch.

A cornered animal, Cassandra could deal with. A wounded one, and moreover one with no fight left in it, was wholly out of her realm of expertise.

Leliana was careful to stay her hand, and in the back of her mind Cassandra is thankful, but continues to exude aggression as she wraps a hand around the prisoner’s arm. She tries not to dwell on the popping of her bones as the girl is pulled to her feet, nor how light she feels in her grasp.

* * *

He must break the bone in her ankle again in order to reset it, individually pick out the bits of wreckage contaminating the wounds on her arm, and likely drink two flasks of lyrium to heal the burns over her left side, branching off in a vein-like pattern over her stomach as though the flames had languidly danced over her skin rather than exploded violently and sent her head on a collision course with a nearby stone wall. Solas preoccupies himself with each of these speculations and plans to avoid surveying her face, paying it nomore attention than a cursory glance to assess the damage.

He proceeds to do so with a continued methodical detachment, and then after that moves his focus to the anchor on her hand, seeing the way the muscles of her arm tighten in the moments where it burns more brightly.

Emery, the Spymaster had told him that her name was Emery.

It has been hours, hours upon hours, before he finally looks at her face. Scars litter it after the ordeal, harsh and angry looking against otherwise unmarred skin, save for a small mole below her lip. Her hair, a deep shade of black, is matted and sticks out at odd angles from her scalp, her dark skin clammy and covered with a sheen of sweat. Her lips are pressed together, not firmly nor painfully, but an unmistakable tension is present even as she sleeps.

Emery Trevelyan.

He has condemned her.

* * *

His arrow flies right in the nick of time, downing the demon about to claw through the flimsy coat she wears, and he lowers Bianca with a smile as she flips around to see the remains at her feet and then turns to thank him, nearly tripping herself up in the jerky motion. He would attribute it to clumsiness if he hadn’t just watched her take down three shades all on her own, and its then that he sees the flaring red patches of skin revealed by said flimsy coat, and the limp with which she walks.

And _then_ he notices the injured yet undeniably fresh face in front of him, skin populated with newly formed scars and underneath dotted with beauty marks. He scowls at the Seeker before turning to introduce himself with a bow, surprised to see, of all things, _confusion_ crossing the girl’s face.

She manages a grin in the seconds that pass, eying Bianca curiously, and he responds jovially, again putting a furrow in her brow.

It was nigh unnoticeable, a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it flinch, but Varric is a storyteller with an eye for detail and would be remiss to ignore the spasm that jolts her form as Solas speaks up again.

Varric glares at the Seeker again. The kid – he has decided that _Bright Eyes_ , while not terribly creative, is a more than suitable nickname – is perplexed by their compassion, and he will be having words, preferably some very colourful ones, with the Seeker later.

* * *

The Commander catches a mere glimpse of her, nothing more, as the rift closes, and upon being introduced to him she proffers a small wave. A moment is all he can afford to give her, and he does so before continuing forward to the Breach.

He does not allow himself the luxury of guilt at the moment.

Maker willing, she survives, and he can feel guilty about her broken and bloodied form to his heart’s content when the world makes sense again.

* * *

Josephine feigns composure at finally meeting the Herald after so much talk, half of her giddy beyond belief at the proximity of Andraste’s chosen, and the other half horrified that such a burden has fallen to an adolescent. The Herald is unerringly polite during the War Council’s discussions, the cordiality rather refreshing, and Josephine is left with the impression of a young woman with potential as the meeting is adjourned.

Later, two knocks on her door precede her entrance, Lady Trevelyan slipping in the room without ceremony and coming to stand in front of her desk. Josephine notes with a quirk of her lip that the Herald wears the gloves she requisitioned. Along with the boots and armor she requisitioned. Josephine may have gone overboard in making sure the Herald would not wake wanting for anything.

“Lady Trevelyan,” she begins, and the girl’s eyes snap away from her survey of the room as though she’s been caught thieving. “What may I do for you?”

She does not respond right away, mouth opening and closing repeatedly as she tries to find the proper words for her request. Josephine waits patiently, head tilted to one side and quill stilled on the page before her.

Then the Herald sighs, brings a hand up to rub at her eyes and asks, “may I stay here for a moment? It seems everyone is vying to speak to me and I – I know they are grateful, and that I should be grateful in for being alive, let alone their admiration, but – “

“Absolutely,” Josephine says, gesturing to the bench to her left. The Herald wastes no time in sitting upon it with a fatigued exhalation, hands coming up to cradle her head.

No one is to disturb herself or the Herald for the rest of the day, Josephine decides.

* * *

She launches the arrow with a practiced ease, Ser Whats-his-face of Who-cares falling to his knees as blood spurts out of his throat. He continues to gurgle behind her as she pulls the arrow free, and then turns to witness the Herald.

The completely normal and human Herald.

_Boring._

Or she would be, if not for how she couldn’t be more than sixteen, shuffling her feet under Sera’s shrewd gaze.

“You’re a tiny thing, aren’t you?” Sera grins, and the teen tries to make her face into something composed and indignant, but instead looks sheepish. Her hands clasp in front of her, dodging Sera’s eye.

Sera will join the Inquisition, and it is her personal mission to make the Herald stand up a little straighter. When she laughs at Sera’s shriek of ‘no breeches’, Sera thinks there might be hope for the Herald just yet.

* * *

The Orlesian hall is dimly lit, yet the Herald is easily singled out in her worn and ruddy chainmail armor, a beaten shield on her back. She fights not to cower in front of the man threatening her life, hands resting defensively on the pommel of her sword, tries to make herself as imposing a figure as possible.

It does not work.

She is halfway through unsheathing her weapon when the man is frozen, his eyes moving beneath a layer of ice and almost pleading with her. Emery is stunned by the stab of pity that flounders in her chest, but searches her surroundings for the culprit even so.

Madame de Fer circles him akin to a feline toying with her prey, head cocked in a decidedly graceful yet chilling manner. She is elegant, Emery observes, exhibiting the kind of poise her mother always praised. It would behoove her to act similarly, to match the new opponent – as Josephine has made it clear that every player of the Game is her adversary – but her elegance indicates a wealth of raw power Emery cannot yet hope to match, skillfully contained and unleashed with a viper’s precision.

Vivienne sizes the Herald up in a similar manner, takes in her disheveled appearance and protective stance, the unkempt hair and pale grey eyes. The child is being fed, but not nearly well enough based on the slight hollowness of her cheeks, and her armor is due for an upgrade. Vivienne will ensure all of these needs are met, in time.

The Herald shrinks under her gaze when she asks for a verdict, but replies in a steady voice that the man has learnt his lesson. A reluctant leader, but a leader nonetheless.

She cannot entirely meet Vivienne’s eye as they speak. That too will have to be remedied.

* * *

“Blackwall? Warden Blackwall?” interrupts him in a tone he can only describe as a chirp, and when he whirls around to face it, the voice is about a foot lower down than expected, belonging to a wisp of a girl in chainmail armor. He fights the smile threatening to spread across his face at the sheathed sword at her hip and the shield across her back, its width easily exceeding that of her shoulders.

He is so focused on repressing a grin that he nearly misses the arrow heading their way, and tells her to fight or be on her merry way. She takes up a post next to him, shoulder to shoulder – _shoulder to elbow, really._

Even after disposing of the bandits, he finds it hard to believe that the girl in front of them is an agent of the Inquisition, let alone the Herald herself. He’s dissuaded when she peels off her glove to show him the mark, the green glow entrancing in its way.

“Does it hurt?” He blurts out, regretting it as she hastily pulls the glove back on. Her companions hover at the corners of his vision, each of them leaning in just a touch to hear her reply.

“Sometimes.”

He vows to do everything in his power to lessen her pain, and pledges himself to the Inquisition on the spot.

* * *

She charges down the coast, stray wisps of hair escaping the bun sitting high atop her head, yelling the least threatening war cry he’s ever heard. The Iron Bull smiles as he drives the pommel of his axe into a bandit’s skull, and makes sure to keep an eye on the Herald throughout the battle, if just to see how she moves.

She favours her right side, leaves herself vulnerable to flank attacks too often, and scrunches up her nose whenever she’s sprayed with blood. She shouts commands to her companions and they follow without question, puts herself in the locus of the battle, and before he realizes it, is guarding his six.  
  
He doesn’t need the help, but he offers her a drink for it afterwards anyway. When she refuses, he realizes that she isn’t young-looking, she’s just _young_ , and initially turns to her companions, considering each of them in turn. He needs to learn just as much of them, to know who’s watching the kid’s back. The Herald welcomes him to the Inquisition with a soft smile, and he is just as impressed by her as he is worried for her life.

* * *

The Herald creeps into Redcliffe’s Chantry with all the grace of a druffalo, her companions only marginally better, but Dorian finds it impertinent to comment on while he’s covered in demon entrails and a hole between realms spits out more behind him. In fact, he’s left with little time to assess the newly arrived party until after the rift is closed, and even then he confesses to focusing more on the anchor itself than the woman baring it.

When his eyes pull away from it to settle on her face, he is instantly met with the urge to coo over her – to smooth the hair sticking out from the elaborate braids along the sides of her head, to brush the bits of debris off her shoulders and pull a handkerchief to wipe the viscera off her forehead. Her cheeks hold a pudge that alludes to youth, but he can already see that her time as the Herald has taken its toll, her eyes just a tad too sunken and skin sallow even in the warm glow of the Chantry’s firelight.

He had heard a whispering at the Tavern of the ‘Daughter of Andraste’, hastily shushed by the man’s fellow patrons, claiming such a title to be diminutive. He, however, finds he agrees with the assessment.

The moment of truth comes when she eyes his staff, an elegant twisting of birchwood, yet she notices it the same way one would notice a cowlick – polite nonchalance. He finds himself both concerned and relieved by her implicit trust.

* * *

_“Burning, searing, hot, too hot, it hurts, what if they die, what if I can’t, they run but not fast enough, the lights approaching too quickly, Maker, it hurts.”_

Cole mutters it as he runs to the gates, blades in hand, her stream of consciousness flowing from his lips as he takes down one Templar, two, three, seven.

_“They march too fast, no banner, no allegiance, swift with vengeance, retribution, I’m going to die, flaring, it hurts.”_

“I can’t come in unless you open!”

_Help him, save him, singing, burning, save him, save him._

The doors open and Cole is blinded. She burns too brightly, she is too green to bear, but he must warn them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If anyone wants to see what I envisioned for Emery, here's how she looks at the start of the game:  
> https://www.flickr.com/photos/153668825@N04/shares/1HtLe1


	2. Haven

Her steps are light for a warrior, hesitant and leaving shallow imprints in the snow as she approaches him, careful not to interrupt his conversation with the Lieutenant. She is afraid of him in some manner, though he does not think he has given her reason to be.  
  
“We’ve received a number of recruits – locals from Haven and some pilgrims,” her eyes are wide as he turns to face her, surprised that he has noticed her arrival, “none made _quite_ the entrance you did.”  
  
His joke is well-received if the tension draining from her posture is anything to go by. However, her hands still rest upon her pommel – a habit he himself falls victim to in times of anxiety. Cullen stands over six feet tall and poses a rather intimidating figure, yes, but he’s being friendly, isn’t he? She speaks sociably about how she’ll try her best to help, but remains guarded in his presence.  
  
So, he shifts the attention further to himself, telling her of his recruitment to the Inquisition unprompted. The Herald takes in his origin with a studious engagement, follows him as he strolls through the sparring soldiers without pause. He catches himself getting swept up in idealism again, and he finds that his apologetic stammering of all things seems to humanize him in her eyes. She smiles at him genuinely, her hands coming to clasp in front of her as she assures him that his opinion is very much valued.  
  
She bounces on her heels in an earnest fashion while he’s called away, and her hands return to her hilt once she finds herself in unfamiliar territory again, but at least it’s a start.

* * *

He is guilt-ridden every time he lays his eyes upon her, and while her survival sparks his curiosity, it does not overcome the hope that she will continue on her way to the apothecary and pass him entirely.  
  
Things have not exactly been playing out as Solas hoped lately, so he is not at all surprised when she brightens upon spotting him, changing her course and holding his eye the entire time. Her shyness, or perhaps uncertainty has not escaped his notice, which makes it all the more jarring that she can meet his gaze without hesitation, and inquire as to his presence.  
  
She is so young.  
  
In truth, they are all young, their lifetimes a blink of an eye as he passes from one millennia to the next, unchanged in a world that has morphed drastically each time he wakes. However, he is not so jaded as to forget the value that each of their existences holds, fleeting though they may be. It is what made his task so difficult at the start.  
  
But the men and women in Haven chose to be here, have lived for decades, loved and lost, knew something of themselves. It was his failures that set all of this motion, yes, but to affect someone with so much life ahead of them, so much to lose. To doom them. That is what he has done to her.  
  
She has latched onto him for reasons he cannot discern, this misplaced trust the chief reason he turns away to look out at the Breach as he speaks to her. She is too young.  
  
“Every great war has its heroes. I’m just curious what kind you’ll be, Da’len.”  
  
The term of endearment slips from his lips entirely independent of thought, her eyes widening in response, and he launches into an explanation before she can inquire to its meaning.  
  
“Ah, forgive me, I did not intend to belittle you in any way. I believe the direct translation would be ‘little one’ or ‘little child’. I can understand how it could be misconstrued as offensive.”  
  
There is something in her eyes that he cannot quite place, but it is suspiciously akin to fondness as she assures him it is no problem.  
  
“It’s nice not be to the Herald, for just a few moments,” she intones. He does not ask about her thoughts on the title again, and she seems grateful. “I… I think the most I can hope is to make the world a better place through all of this.”  
  
A cordial answer, but a truthful one. With her in the center of everything, he never truly intended to leave, but her sincerity dashes any inclinations that may have lingered.  
  
He will fix this. For her sake.

* * *

“Are you eating well?”

The Herald glances up from the war table after a few moments once she realizes the question was intended for her. She gives Josephine a quizzical smile as she nods, murmuring how her rations have been more than adequate.

“Do you have any preferences in meal choice? I’m not familiar on anything native to Ostwick, but I could procure the resources necessary for a homecooked meal.”

She answers in the negative, and Josephine nods cordially whilst making a note to investigate Ostwick’s cuisine regardless. Leliana shakes her head in her peripheral, a knowing smile playing upon her lips.

“Your sleeping arrangement poses no issues?”

“The gloves fit, I presume?”

“I trust none of the visiting Chantry loyalists have bothered you?”

She only halts when the Commander raises an eyebrow, for if even Ser Rutherford is willing to confront her overbearingness, perhaps it is time to stop.

* * *

It is the trademark of youth to question fundamental beliefs, and though Leliana has not allowed herself the pleasure of uncertainty in action or principle in almost a decade, she does not blame the young Andrastian for debating her faith in the Maker. From what she remembers in Kinloch Hold, the Circle is a prime environment for questioning one’s beliefs even if it tells its disciples otherwise.

She hears no voices and sees no visions, the only thing remarkable being the anchor on her hand, pulsing beneath her leather gloves. Emery flexes the hand in question as she says it, jaw tightening momentarily and then relaxing as she lowers her arm to her side.  
  
Leliana knows her deflections to be a refusal of responsibility, her uncertainty her only defense against two terrifying truths: she is Andraste’s chosen, or the universe has been possibly irreparably torn asunder, and she alone is bestowed with the power to fix it, guided by her own conscience. She will have to grow out of such a notion soon and decide whether she is a devoted follower or an unwilling messiah, but Leliana will grant her time to do so if that is what she needs. The personal revelation can wait if the people have already made up their minds, and the people of Haven certainly have.

There are whispers as she bids Leliana farewell and walks away, reverent and awestruck, inspiring both loyalty and fear in turn. Leliana knows the feeling well, having watched Tabris learn to live with it and receiving some of her own by association.  
  
Tabris would have better advice than she on dealing with it, the Hero of Ferelden only a handful of years older than Emery is now by the events of Ostagar. She remains woefully unreachable, though. Perhaps a letter to Alistair would prove more fruitful.  
  
Weeks later, the reply of ‘too busy, something mysterious afoot, will write more next time, tell her good luck!’ is the opposite of helpful. Leliana smooths it out and keeps it on the corner of her desk anyway, his nearly illegible writing eliciting a small smile every time it catches her eye.

* * *

There is a tenderness in the Herald’s eyes as she passes out blankets to the refugees, having insisted they spend the day riding across the Hinterlands to locate each cache and later to be a part of the relief efforts, choosing to personally aid Mother Giselle.

Cassandra passes the supplies to her wordlessly as she distributes them, her mere presence seeming to moralize the poor souls. Some are no doubt mortified at the prospect of Andraste’s prophet catering to them, but the majority remain supremely grateful, thanking her in hushed voices.

Afterwards, the two of them tend to the fire at the Crossroad’s centre, Solas and Varric patrolling just outside the settlement’s borders. Their conversation has petered out into a comfortable silence, the Herald having run out of questions about the Seekers and the Divine and Cassandra’s home life, the last a curiosity she indulges but only begrudgingly.

The sun has long since set, the majority of the residents off to sleep save for those in too much pain to do so and their keepers. At the least, they will not starve for warmth this evening.

Cassandra pushes at one of the logs, a rush of sparks flying into the air and crackling above them. She watches them flutter, leisurely floating down to the ground to rest among the other embers, dimming in the upturned dirt.

A sudden weight falls upon her arm, and she moves to push it away only to find the Herald, sound asleep against her. Cassandra groans but simply adjusts their position so that the girl’s temple rests on her shoulder, sitting under the shelter of her arm.

The logs crackle, the Herald snores, and Cassandra, after making sure that no one is around to see, allows herself to smile.

* * *

Its song permeates the air and thrums in his chest, a siren’s call with the promise of an almost-something that he can’t quite hear, would forever be reaching out to. The notes glitter, glimmer, gleam in a major key with the wrong sharp or flat thrown in haphazardly, the only aural indication that this lyrium is far more dangerous than the normal stuff.  
  
Varric throws his arm out to stop her from turning the corner right away, catching her in the gut.

“Red lyrium,” he says in response to her questioning look.

She turns her gaze and forcibly lowers his arm, motioning for the trio to follow her.

It’s a hulking slab, easily twice his height and glowing profusely, a vibrant crimson that whistles in the air. He’s too mesmerized by it to see her approach it, too late to stop her from reaching out to it, and he lets out a shout just before her fingers make contact with the surface.

He knows the appeal, feels it in his veins, but she needs to _back away._

Bright Eyes shakes herself, takes two deliberate steps back, and eyeing the giant rock, takes two more. Her lips are pursed as she surveys it.

“You’ve got to be more careful, kid. I warned you how that shit turns people into statues and makes things float, right? That wasn’t creative license – a lot of good people – “

She runs headfirst into the thing, shield at her front, and it cracks into little pieces, the song flaring and fizzling out until he’s left only with his thoughts again.

“Well, that’s one way to deal with it.”

* * *

She can slice a training dummy to pieces - that much Cullen has been able to ascertain - but aside from their first meeting he has not seen her in battle, unable to judge how well she fights in the thick of it. Her strikes demonstrate a focus on precision than brute force, smart for someone her size, but if he’s to evaluate her as asked he’ll need to see her using her shield.

Cassandra is not there to spar with her, and truth be told he knows he’ll get a better gage if he’s on the other side of her sword, looking for her weak spots with the mindset of a rival. He does not miss the way she seizes when he asks to her to match blades, greets her hesitance with what he means to be an encouraging smile.

After three minutes populated with the awful metallic clank of two swords meeting, Cullen is certain that she is holding back, that she could push him harder but is refraining from doing so. From what he knows of her personality thus far, he is also certain she would deny this if asked.

The only solution then, is to push her first.

He almost regrets his next swing in the sudden widening of her eyes, but she blocks it, thrusts her blade forward at him, and they fall into the dance once again.

Using her height to her advantage, her shield bashes his chin upward rather than backward, knocking him off of his balance and sending him a few feet back trying to regain it. He does so, but only just in time to keep her sword from nearing his throat, and her shock at his recovery is easily exploited. In a matter of seconds his blade is pressed against her jugular.

They’re both panting, and it’s her heavy breath that breaks her skin just slightly, a drop of blood pooling on his sword’s edge.

He retracts immediately, offers her a handkerchief to mop at it, but they are both still smiling.

Her footwork can be improved, but otherwise, Cullen is impressed.

* * *

The Herald’s eyes are practically bulging out of her skull as she takes in the ornamentations and lustre of Val Royeaux, Cassandra swearing that her breathing stopped as she approached the Sun Gates. She stops to read every plaque as they venture through the opening walkway, stopping to offer a friendly smile to the Orlesians as they pass. The expression crumbles as they gasp and flee.  
  
The scout kneels to address them, the Herald stiffening at the gesture but nevertheless nodding so the woman would continue her report. If possible, she stiffens more so at the mention of Templars, though Cassandra can hardly reason why. Had she not trained to be one of them?

Her pace has slowed considerably, suddenly far less eager to observe the shining city. She dwells unnecessarily long in front of each statue, sending occasional glances to the trio before returning to the carvings. She tugs at the cuff of her glove with rapt attentiveness, eyes flicking to Solas once more.

It had not yet occurred to Cassandra that Emery had no allegiance to the Templars, despite training in their ranks. It had not occurred to her that she may be on the side of the mages. It had not occurred that Emery’s sudden hesitation may not have anything to do with her Templar history at all, but their Elven company.

And this was a difficult realization to come upon, considering she had not thought of such things herself. She would not allow the Inquisition’s forces nor the Chantry to harm Solas, but it seemed an unfortunate truth that every mage, willing apostate or no, must now exist with the looming threat of Templar retribution. Such was the way of things after Kirkwall. Solas had come to terms with that and taken Cassandra’s intial distrust in stride. Emery, ostensibly, is less comfortable with that inherent suspicion. She snaps to attention when Varric pokes fun at her dallying, offers an unconvincing smile, and marches through the gates to hear this Chantry Mother’s accusations.  
  
It is flowery of Cassandra to say, but Val Royaux has certainly lost some of its shine.

* * *

He jumps at the sound of her voice, too absorbed in watching the smiths work to hear her careful footfalls in the falling snow.

“I’m sorry to interrupt your…” Her eyes go wide as she searches for a word, her feet shuffling at her own awkwardness. The tips of her ears are red, but Blackwall’s unsure if it's from the cold or self-consciousness.

“Brooding?” He offers. A thin-lipped smile joins the myriad of indicators that she’s embarrassed, but he finds it more endearing than anything else.

“I was going to say pondering,” she replies, head ducked. She takes a moment longer to feel anxious and then quite literally shakes herself out of it, a not at all subtle roll of her shoulders seeming to cascade down her limbs as she meets his gaze head on.

“You’re a Grey Warden.”

“Yes,” he says, eloquence apparently not being a strong suit for either of them.

“I… used to want to be a Grey Warden.” She admits it as though it were a guilty secret, head ducking again. She is remarkably earnest, painfully so as she peeks up at him.

He feels a swell of pride at the thought of her in the blue and silver of a Warden’s armor and then a stab of self-loathing at the thought of his deception. After so many years, one would think he had gotten used to the lie, but it had a way of sneaking up on him in the most inconvenient of times.

“The Order would have liked to have such a capable soldier out fighting Darkspawn,” he states, and whatever lingering mortification she has dissolves into a child-like enthusiasm.

“Can you tell me about them? The Darkspawn? I was in Denerim during the fifth Blight but I was far out of the city by the Battle.” She no longer sounds tentative, and as endearing as her nervousness was, Blackwall finds he enjoys her unabashed curiosity much more so. He is able to answer this one in detail, thankfully, having actually fought Darkspawn a time or two, but he can tell her nothing of the Joining or the death of an Archdemon, claiming it to be secret of the trade.

She takes his word for it and moves to a different line of questioning each time, and while he is thankful for her confidence in him, he thinks it would be pertinent that she develop a healthy amount of skepticism. There would be no shortage of people willing to take advantage of the Herald of Andraste for her age alone; best not to add an overly trusting personality to the mix.

In the midst of his description of the Deep Roads, her head swivels to see the Commander calling her over, Cassandra by his side. She smiles apologetically at him and thanks him for his time before running – actually running, a full-on sprint – and coming to attention in front of the blond, giving him a salute. Blackwall can hardly make out their facial expressions from this distance, but some sense of shock or disapproval must have radiated, the Herald bringing a hand up to cup the back of her neck in a flustered motion. He watches the meeting, watches her compress more and more as the conversation wears on.

Blackwall decides to let her be as trusting as she wants if it gives her the chance to be a kid now and again. She deserves that much.

* * *

Sera returns from an hour of mucking about around the training grounds to find the Herald sitting alone in the Tavern, back ram-rod straight and arms folded on the table as she stares down into an empty glass. Sera crashes into the chair opposite her unannounced, the girl’s hand flying to her sword reflexively.  
  
Sera likes her. She’s not too uptight about this whole Breach thing, or at least, she isn’t sure how to be. Her shoulders relax in a smooth motion and she rolls her eyes at Sera’s antics, but it’s fake. The Herald likes her too much to really put the effort into looking exasperated; her eyes are too warm as she greets her.  
  
They make polite small talk about their friends, her advisors, and it’s kind of mindless, blabbing about the day-to-day care routine for Blackwall’s beard and how Josephine’s as tense as a bowstring with the rumors she’s juggling about. Sera’s mind wanders while she speaks; it does that sometimes, things get lost in translation between her brain and her tongue, and she thinks of the Commander pacing and yelling but not really hearing his own words, and being alone when you’re with people, and then the Herald, _the Herald_ , sitting sullen and lonesome.  
  
“You ever do anything fun around here?” She switches gears, ignoring the Herald’s confused look at the change of subject. “Wait a minute – are you even allowed to be in here? You can’t drink anything, can you?”  
  
“Flissa gives me water free of charge,” she says with a shrug, leaning back in her chair.  
  
“She’d give you anything for free if you just asked, you’re the bloody Herald!” She waves her arms animatedly to accentuate the point, then stops mid-motion, jerkily point a finger at the girl, her palm turned inwards. “I am _not_ saying you can drink, though – not allowing it!”  
  
She laughs softly, hands up in front of her chest in a defensive gesture. “Understood.”  
  
They lapse into a comfortable silence, people-watching for a few minutes. The dwarves, ever-present in the tavern, argue a few feet away about Maker knows what; Flissa giggles at another soldier’s attempts to woo her (and consequently, get a free drink); The Herald traces her finger around the rim of her glass and stares at a particularly interesting spot in the woodwork, a dent that surely has a story behind it, and she’s caught up in imagining the barfight that occurred when Sera’s fingers snap impatiently in front of her face.  
  
“You distracted me!” She says, eyes narrowed.  
  
Emery hums in response, slowly having realized that Sera will elaborate on her seemingly random outbursts given time.  
  
“C’mon, we’re gonna go do something _fun._ Bet you I can nail one of Cassandra’s dummies with an arrow and get out before she takes my head off.”  
  
She’s also realized that just going with Sera’s seemingly random ideas proves to be greatly beneficial to her mental state, so she stands and bows, gesturing for the elf to lead the way.  
  
“You’re dead if she catches you,” Emery warns as Sera passes, nose scrunched as the elder over-enthusiastically ruffles her hair.  
  
“Only have to run faster than you, don’t I?” she grins, opening the tavern door.

* * *

Leliana spies her cautious approach to the tent in her peripheral, but thinks little of it as she discusses the situation of the traitor in their midst. The voice of her agent, dead under her surveillance, rings clearly at the base of her skull.

“Make it clean,” she bites out. “Painless if you can. We were friends once.”

The man nods, and she is halfway through turning back to her reports when the Herald speaks.

“Wait, what are you doing?” She is accusatory, hands resting on the pommel of her sword as she stands from her lean against the length of wood supporting the tent. Her brows furrow further at Leliana’s response, and Leliana herself is disappointed in it, though likely for vastly different reasons.

The Herald, from the outset, has shown disdain for her methods, preferring blunt force or peaceful negotiation to her dealings in the shadows. In her words, the other two hold a measure of honesty, and she values that above all else. Leliana was surprised by the admission, but more by the fact that it was spoken aloud than its content; the Herald, timid as she is, cannot lie to save her life, her tells numerous and exceedingly obvious as a conversation wears on. She does not take kindly to Leliana playing the Maker, believing it arrogant to think matters of life and death should rest in her hands.

Leliana is instead dissatisfied by the emotion in her voice, the choleric anger that seeps in even as she strives for a professional aloofness. A fixation on sentimentality makes for a poor Spymaster indeed. Yet she cannot stem the subsequent irritation that bursts forth when the Inquisitor jokingly calls the traitor’s death extreme.

She trained Variah. She taught the elf their ciphers and their codes, she let her bleed for their cause. The young woman deserves some measure of penance from the man who did it, and if it must be by Leliana’s will, then she will orchestrate the proper elements to ensure it is so.

“Now is _precisely_ the time for ideals,” Emery declares. She drops Leliana’s gaze but steps forward, voice softer in her trademark hesitance but with an undercurrent of ardency, the quiver in her tone indicating commitment rather than uncertainty. “I don’t have the stomach for unnecessary bloodshed, Spymaster. There is nothing admirable in taking lives.”

There is an unspoken _please_ as Leliana retreats, bending over the table to scan the documents scattered across it. The Herald does not move from her spot, resolute in her belief, and Leliana is at least proud that she is giving her opinion at all. It must speak to the severity of her conviction.

She orders the traitor’s apprehension with a sigh in her voice.

“Now if you’re happy, I have more work to do,” she says with a finality, the report of Variah’s murder catching her eye where it sat on the table’s corner.

She is not pleased with this disagreement’s outcome, but she will adapt.

* * *

Bull has spent years outside of the Qun, yet he can never quite get used to the cultural incongruence in explaining the re-educators. It’s to be expected, the concept objectively fucking terrifying, altering someone’s memories and beliefs with what could be considered psychological torture in some circles. Thus, the horror on the kid’s face is expected, but remains nonverbal, as is her modus operandi.  
  
“It’s disturbing, yeah,” he grants in response to her stunned gape, “but if you commit a crime here, what happens? You get your head lopped off and that’s the end of the story. At least the Qun tries to fix you.”  
  
She nods in a placating sort of way, but her calm is betrayed by the fearful glint in her eye. He wonders if she ever thinks about how no insignificant portion of her inner circle thrives off secrecy and deception, how each of them kill on a daily basis.  
  
Watching her gulp and try to shake some sense back into herself, he knows she thinks about it. Probably more than was healthy to maintain one’s sanity.  
  
When he tells her he willingly submitted himself to the re-educators, she is speechless in shock, in fear. He expects it to continue when he says he wanted to be fixed like the others had been fixed. He expects horror and confusion, and maybe pity.  
  
But something understanding settles behind her eyes, speaking not to her own experience – no, she was too expressive for something like that not to be legible from her posture alone – but from something she witnessed. Maybe a Templar who wanted to stop second-guessing their lyrium suppliers. Maybe a mage who’d rather be made Tranquil than live fighting. He’d seen it before in Orlais, and considering what he’s heard of Ostwick, he imagines the differing Circles weren’t too dissimilar.  
  
A scout approaches and informs her that her presence is requested in the war room, and there’s an unmistakable relief in her eyes as she’s whisked away. Bull knows she was lost in thoughts completely unrelated to him by the end of that conversation, and knows better than to take it personally.  
  
Regardless, he has some more digging to do, on a certain Circle of Magii and the Trevelyan family. Best to know what he’s up against when her emotions start pouring out of her left and right after it all gets too overwhelming to bottle up. She’ll go to Varric first, then Josephine, then Solas, then Sera. The order is harder to determine after that, based on who she’s willing to show weakness too. He won’t be high on the list, but she shoots him a look over her shoulder that says he’s still on it, in some capacity at least.

* * *

She is careful to refrain from retching until Sera’s turned away, refusing to admit that Solas’s cooking is anything less than stellar. They’d been doing it all day – contradicting each other for the sake of it in a teasing joviality, simply to pass the time. Blackwall grins around his mouthful of the gray-brown mush, and she returns it guiltily at having been caught.

She continues to choke down the concoction, heavy on the elfroot and not much else, until Sera throws the remains of her portion into the fire petulantly. The trio is surprised when Solas does not berate her for it; he probably knows damn well how awful his cooking is and just wanted to punish the girls for their play-fighting. Without further conflict to sustain her energy, Sera crashes in her tent, high-pitched snores sounding not seconds after.

Emery swallows the last mouthful with noticeable effort, and Solas simply shakes his head in response, retiring to bed himself.

She gapes, understandably, when Blackwall helps himself to a second serving. He fights a chuckle as he resumes his position on the log across from her, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees.  
  
“How?” She asks, head cocked inquisitively. “And more importantly, why?”

He does chuckle at that, watching her recoil in distaste as he pops another spoonful into his mouth.  
  
“Years of traveling from place to place means living off the land,” he inclines his head, “and that means more than enough exposure to elfroot stew, my Lady.”

She is contemplating the response when he adds, “though I’ve never had to eat slop as terrible as this.”

She snickers, joyful and unabashed for a couple seconds before she remembers herself, face melting into a more restrained yet pleasant smile. Sparks land by her feet, and she stomps them out absentmindedly while he slurps down the stew in his bowl, debating a third serving. She might call him a masochist at that point – no amount of hunger is worth the torture of elfroot stew.

“We used to season it with ground up Spindleweed, among other things,” he mentions offhandedly, shocking her from her fire-fixated stupor. “Made the bitterness a tad more bearable, but on the road you couldn’t ask for much more than that.”

Crickets chirp faintly as she says, “so you’ll be cooking tomorrow, I take it?”

“If you so request,” he smiles. “I’ll do you one better. When we get back to Haven, I think we all deserve a nice home-cooked meal. I’ll work wonders if you can bully the kitchen staff out for an hour or two.”

“You’re my hero,” she says seriously, before standing and bidding him a good night.

The moment is almost soured by his guilt, but its becoming easier and easier to ignore.

* * *

She moves slowly, with far more accuracy than Vivienne would have thought her capable of, as she cuts the leaves off the stem, her eyes narrowed and tongue poking out of the corner of her mouth. The shears close with a satisfying ‘clip’, but two leaves remain, and more pressing matters await them ahead in Redcliffe village.

“My dear, I must ask about your strange fascination with elfroot. Do we really have the time to pick each plant we come across?”

The girl looks between her and the plant for a couple moments, chagrined, but ultimately moves the shears to the adjacent leaf and renews her meticulous efforts, maneuvering just as Scout Harding had showed her.

“There was a young apostate,” the Herald begins, sagging a bit at the tightness developing in Vivienne’s jaw, “nicked by one of the rogue Templars along West Road while he was making his way to Redcliffe. It wasn’t too severe, but it was right on the flesh of his back. Could hardly move without pulling at it somehow. This,” she paused, holding up the newly harvested leaf to exemplify the point, “could numb the pain a bit if Mother Giselle has the time to juice it.”

“He was simply passing through the area? You are far too naïve if you think he didn’t obtain the injury in a willing skirmish.”

The Herald frowns as she clips through the final stem. “He was cowering in a bush, begging to be allowed safe passage when I came across him,” she mutters. “Didn’t even notice he was bleeding until I pointed it out.”

She lingers only a moment longer before rising to her feet, depositing the leaves into Vivienne’s capable hands. “I’m not sure if you can keep them fresh at all, but anything to help them from drying out should do the trick.”

She offers a tight smile as she pulls her knapsack back on, filled with embrium and elfroot and spindleweed. For the lungs, the wounds, and the soul. She read once somewhere that the last symbolizes well wishes and speedy recoveries, and heard that it’s rather marvelous on ram’s meat as a seasoning.

* * *

“You are becoming quite proficient at that,” Solas remarks as she wrenches her arm back from the rift, hovering a few feet away to catch her if she falls; it would not be the first time. She’s panting, sweat across her brow, but she extends a hand out towards him so he knows not to fret.  
  
“Thanks,” she manages after a few moments, rotating her wrist almost experimentally, as if she half-expected the joints to have popped out of the place. “How many more are in the area?”  
  
“Three,” he replies, lip quirking at her exaggerated sigh. She cups her wrist, twisting it again to no effect. He keeps an eye on the movement as she treks off northward towards the next one, wondering if it is a nervous tic, if the magic bothers her, or if she’s truly injured. She would likely not admit to the latter two; he has not known her long but feels confident in the assessment.  
  
There is nothing wise in unnecessary pain, but he understands the desire for self-sufficiency, however misguided it may be. If she is hurt, he will approach her privately and ask if he can aid. For now, he will provide a distraction.  
  
“I believe the next rift was not an offshoot of the Breach, but rather an already existing tear exacerbated by it, given the accounts of it going back seemingly weeks before the Conclave. Perhaps a natural occurrence from an accumulation of spirits in the area given the warring Templars and Mages. Or significant utilization of magic has rendered – “  
   
Sera blows a raspberry with her tongue, loud and disgusting sounding, but most importantly annoying. Solas finds Sera is exceptional at annoying him.  
  
“I am simply voicing a speculation on – “  
  
She blows a second, louder raspberry, if possible more obnoxious than the first.  
  
“Go on, Solas,” the Herald encourages, regretting leaving Cassandra to supervise the last campsite’s set-up. She sorely needed a buffer between the two elves. “I’m listening.”  
  
“More important things than his magic going on though,” Sera says, having bounded forward a couple steps to stand on Emery’s other side. She fiddles with her bow as they walk, blowing a strand of hair out of her eyes with an overstated puff of air. There’s something akin to concern in her voice when she adds, “thought you’d focus on the important stuff.”  
  
“The nature of the rifts we are encountering is valuable for multiple – “  
  
“Oh, quit it with the fade shite for a minute, I’m trying to ask her if she’s alright,” she snaps, stopping Emery with a hand on her shoulder. Solas is silently impressed by her forward, if rather tactless approach.  
  
“So, are you?”  
  
“Am I what?”  
  
“Hurting! All that green spurting out your hand, it’s gotta hurt. Need a break?”  
  
Sera is horrified by her stunned expression, because that means she hadn’t considered taking a break an option, and no one should have as much as the Herald does on her plate, and fuck all if she’ll let it stand without time to rest and recuperate. She eyes the girl’s wrist warily before declaring they should set up camp here, right now, in their immediate spot.  
  
Emery protests disbelievingly, turning to Solas for support, but he responds in the affirmative with a composure that Sera knows she can break, eventually. The raspberries seemed effective. He gives her a knowing look that makes her skin crawl before moving to put up his own tent, but she’d seen him watching the wrist too. He’s not always stuck over in the Fade.  
  
Emery leaves Solas’s tent a few hours later with bandages wrapped around her wrist, and Sera pretends not to notice. Can’t let her know that there’s a truce between them when it comes to her.

* * *

“Your hair is growing longer – have you any interest in styling it differently?”

Vivienne asks this as Emery returns from bathing in the lake, fingers attempting to comb through her frustratingly tangled, now shoulder-length hair. It is the longest she has allowed it to grow since she joined the Templar order, the strands that used to fall in her face now long enough to be tucked behind her ears. Her hair has always been a nuisance at best and a symbol of pride and vanity at worst. She prefers not to remember the specifics, but the Chantry would come up with very convoluted reasons to discipline a child sometimes.

Returning to the present, she has never considered anything besides a ponytail, or a bun if she’s feeling particularly adventurous.

She responds this in as many words and is met with the enchanter’s floaty chuckle, a comforting sound in the dim light of the setting sun.

Emery ponders whether she could get away with simply shaving all of it off, if her features were too masculine to do so, if her head would simply get cold. These concerns are unvoiced, however, as Vivienne beckons her over to sit in front of her. She acquiesces, kneeling as the woman begins working her fingers through the rat’s nest with careful consideration, listening for Emery’s winces when she pulls too hard at a particular knot.

The motion is soothing, as is Vivienne’s voice as she regales Emery with tales of the Orlesian court, knowing the girl is appalled (and tacitly delighted) by the intrigue and happenstance of the Game. Her eyelids droop without warning, and when she wakes, Vivienne is putting the finishing touches on the small braids framing her face.

“You’re a vision, my dear,” Vivienne smiles before shooing her off to bed, the hour being late and their watch now over.

* * *

“Oh, fuck,” the Herald breathes out as she takes in their newest foe. Vivienne scoffs, Sera squawks out “Oi, no bad words from you!” and Bull? Bull just laughs.

Emery regains her bearings impressively quick. “Vivienne, barriers, now. You go for its left hind leg, Sera on the right. Bull?”

“Yeah, Boss?”

“We’re gonna keep it distracted,” she orders with a crooked smile.

The grin across the Iron Bull’s face could be interpreted as hysterical as he runs towards the beast, the beat of its wings practically shaking the Earth. It lets out a deafening screech, the teeth nearly as long as his forearm, the glint of its metallic blue scaling catching the sun’s light just so.

He roars in return, hears the kid giggle next to him as she barrels into it with her shield, throwing the entirety of her weight into the motion.

“Dragons,” he sighs wistfully as he hacks into its leg.

* * *

Emery opens the tie on the package slowly, the red ribbon giving way to a box filled with a series of books – scholarly ones, on war strategy, on ancient arcane magics, on the hierarchy of nobility in Ferelden and Orlais. The ones atop the pile are new, spines virtually untouched, and she honestly feels a touch of guilt in picking one up, breathing in the scent of the inked pages.

A card accompanies the gift, saying they were intended to continue her education in such chaotic times, and that Josephine had taken the liberty of asking each of the Inner Circle’s members for anything they could spare. They span a variety of topics, one a compilation of Ferelden folktales, another a record of the Dwarven paragons.

Each has a note written on the inside cover in delicate loopy handwriting, detailing why it was chosen for her ongoing tutoring. Some of the more weathered ones include other handwriting samples, the book on the First Blight populated with chicken-scratch she imagines belongs to Cullen, another on the history of the Seekers with margins filled with the heavy-handed lines of Cassandra. She smiles to find autographed copies of Varric’s works, and is taken aback by the poor condition of a book bound in green leather, pages spilling out of it. In skimming the first couple pages, she determines it to be an obsessively filled journal from Solas about Elven history that he’s learned throughout his journeys into the Fade.

The bottom one, the oldest and most worn, reads _The History of Grey Wardens in Ferelden_ and underneath it _Ferdinand Genitivi._ The inside cover shows a stick figure drawing of what she presumes to be Blackwall, another figure she guesses is Sera shooting an apple off his head. She picks it up with delicate care, sits against her headboard, and begins the first of many long reading sessions that steal away much needed rest.

* * *

The bonfire provides little heat in the wake of Haven’s rushing wind, but the Herald hardly seems to mind from her position, engrossed in the Tale of the Champion more than any of his complaints about the Frostbacks’ climate.

She sits on the log next to him, legs crossed and elbows resting on her knees as she reads. She makes no sound, but Varric’s sure he can tell which part she’s at by the look on her face.   

She frowns at Carver’s death, smirks at Varric’s entrance, bites her lip to keep from grinning as Blondie threads his fingers through Hawke’s hair and pulls her to him. She grimaces at Red’s attempts at romance, sulks at Rivaini’s betrayal, smiles sadly at the Arishok’s defeat. She pinches her lips into a knowing line as Daisy’s Eluvian spits out a demon, softens as Hawke manages to stop a battle between herself and the clan. Her lips curl at Meredith and Orsino’s bickering, and her teeth are bared and jaw set as the Chantry explodes. Hawke casts Blondie off and Bright eyes wilts, Choir Boy’s resolve only weighing further down on her shoulders. Her face then morphs into pure confusion, and she glances up at Varric with wide eyes, tears welling at the corners.

“Orsino turned to blood magic?” Varric knew his writing was good, but the gut-wrenching despair written across her face tells him he’s even better than he imagined. Knight-Commander Meredith was batshit crazy, but considering how long it took the Templars to see that, including their dear Commander, the fact their former Templar-in-training sees Orsino’s downfall as a tragedy rather than a foregone conclusion suggests one of two things: she was more resistant to the Chantry’s propaganda than he originally thought, or he’s one of the greatest storytellers to ever live. He’s betting on the former but hoping for the latter.

“He was desperate,” Varric shrugs, and Bright Eyes takes it at face value without any furthering questioning, which is good, considering how very alive and very hidden Head Enchanter Orsino is, and lying to the kid makes him feel _denser_ for lack of a better description.

Her eyes skim the last few pages with alarming speed, eager to see the end. He sees her light up as Curly steps up to the plate, scowl as the Elf falls at the swipe of Hawke’s dagger, and she is apparently left unsatisfied as she closes the book, slowly lowering it to rest in her lap.

“She just … walked away?”

“She’d given more than enough,” Varric defends.

The teen considers it, tugging gently on the fingers of her glove.

“You really believe that?” She asks after a beat, and there’s no sting to it, just a disheartening weariness and maybe, in the way it tapers off, the barest vestige of hope.

“Yeah. Yeah, I do."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No Dorian and Cole this time around, since I want to write something to go with In Hushed Whispers and introduce them through the course of the story (aside from the short intros I had first chapter). I organized these almost based on the order you meet them but also just what made sense in terms of progression, lemme know if you think anything should be moved around. The real question is can you tell who my faves are, as in whose parts I wrote immediately in a flurry of excited writing versus whose parts I spit out in the last hour so I could post the whole chapter? I wanna know how transparent the writing is, to see if you can spot the difference. Hope you liked it!


	3. In Hushed Whispers

Bright Eyes … slows. She’s running at the Terror with her shield at the ready, and as she passes the morphing glyph on the ground, she slows to a crawl, the Terror just as lethargic. The slice of her blade through its arm seems more brutal from this lens, the edge languidly tearing through sinewy tendon and splitting bone, its green flesh flaying off and floating back into the rift.

A wraith shrieks to his left as the Iron Lady depletes its shield with a well-placed bolt of lightning; Hero and he watch Bright Eyes’s display with a horrified awe. The severed limb takes seconds to fall to the ground, its other claw coming towards her in the same sluggish fashion.

Varric only realizes the danger of the movement in the last second, Bianca raised and firing off an arrow into the thing’s forearm, pinning it to its chest. It howls, but it’s a low and echoed imitation of its normal screech. A second arrow pierces its skull.

Then she _finally_ rolls out of the glyph’s sphere of influence, springing onto the balls of her feet as though it were any other combat roll of any other fight and not _time fucking slowing down_. She closes the rift with practiced ease, though still rolls her shoulder at the stress it inflicts on the muscles of her arm.

“What…” Varric struggles to piece together the thought. “What was that?”

“What was what?” She rotates her wrist, fixing him with a curious look.

“You were slow,” Hero says.

“I was… slow,” she repeats.

“Yes.” Varric has to remember the puzzled quirk of her lip for later. “You slowed down.”

She looks between him and Hero with a raised brow, then turns her gaze upon the Iron Lady.

“What they’re failing to communicate is some form of temporal distortion,” she supplies. “We must speak with Fiona post-haste, my dear. Hurry along.”

She retains her lofty air as she marches forward, Bright Eyes falling into step beside her, but there’s an undercurrent of uncertainty that the trademark Orlesian pretension cannot mask. If he didn’t know better, Varric might label it as fear.

But the Iron Lady is cold as ice, an impenetrable fortress of decadence and intellectualism, the type of woman who expects a crowd to part in front of her and shows no surprise when it actually does so. She’s not afraid of anything, right?

Right?

Well, shit.

* * *

The Gull and Lantern is low lit, patrons scattering to the corners as the Herald and her entourage wade through to find the First Enchanter, pale and haggard. Her eyes glow with a vivacity Vivienne quietly respects, her fervency one of the few things Vivienne can pride her on in light of her misguided aspirations towards sovereignty.

“Fiona, darling, it’s been far too long since we last spoke. You look dreadful! Have you been sleeping well?” she admonishes, crossing her arms over her chest.

The elf greets her out of formality, giving a perfunctory nod before turning her confused gaze to Emery. “What brings you to Redcliffe, Herald?”  
  
“Your invitation, First Enchanter.”

“Pardon?”

“We spoke in Val Royeaux,” Emery says, her own expression just as bemused as the mage in front of her. “You asked that I meet you here so that we may discuss an alliance.”

Vivienne watches Fiona’s brows pull inward and her hands begin to worry at the fabric at her hips. It is a countenance Vivienne had learned to associate with contemplation rather than anxiety, Fiona’s outward eccentricities seemingly designed to avoid the perception of a threat. Her twitching fingers reflected lightning fast thought but exuded a nervous aura, the furrow of her brows communicating a befuddled impasse whilst her mind raced to piece the puzzle together. It was a well thought out strategy; just when you believed you had her cornered and yourself at high ground, she would strike.

Yet this fidgeting is not the same as her normal, carefully tended meekness. Something has fazed the First Enchanter.

“I have not been to Val Royeaux since prior to the incident at the Conclave,” Fiona says. “Now that you say it, I do feel… strange.”  
  
Vivienne’s first suspicion is blood magic, though controlling an individual so completely should have left physical signs, if not scars from the amount of blood needed then stilted gestures, displays of the body fighting to reassert control. Fiona would have noticed the former and the Herald should have noticed the latter, meaning she is either lying adeptly or they are dealing with something far more dangerous than simple negotiation or a garden variety apostate.

Vivienne moves imperceptibly closer to the Herald.

“Regardless, the situation has changed,” Fiona continues. “The free mages have … pledged themselves. To the service of the Tevinter Imperium. If any alliance is to be discussed, I no longer have the authority to facilitate it.”

“Fiona, dear,” Vivienne drawls. “Your dementia is showing.”

“I cannot think of a single worse thing you could have done,” Varric adds.

Emery would laugh if she could shake the newfound chill on the back of her neck, if not at their comments then her incredulity at the situation.

“Who may I speak with, then?”

The magister enters with an air of importance, the due grandeur of nobility. Vivienne takes in the lines of his face and the cowl over his head, her expression neutral to hide her distaste at his presence. Blackwall, at her side, looks as though he’s sucked on a lemon. Varric’s expression is not dissimilar. The tavern’s atmosphere has changed with the arrival of something sinister.  
  
Emery, though equally perturbed if her widening eyes are any indication, does not cower with Alexius’s leering approach. Vivienne takes pride in her composure, but nevertheless moves closer to the girl once more. She could not afford to be too careful.

* * *

The Chantry’s walls are as thick as those of a defending castle, Blackwall recalling vaguely that Redcliffe’s populace took refuge in it during the Blight. There’s a fortitude to it that’s just as spiritual as it is physical. His awe is soon sullied as a familiar green glow creeps into his vision, a mage before the open rift twirling his staff in a masterful move before turning to face them, rising from a crouch.

“Good! You’re finally here! Help me close this, would you?”

Blackwall doesn’t have time to laugh before the rift spits out another wave of demons. He dashes to the right and knocks a Terror off its feet, Emery mirroring the motion with another Terror to his left. Their hacking and slashing is almost in sync, a pride welling in his chest as her Terror falls before his. One of Varric’s arrows finishes the job for him, and Emery is already halfway across the room, defending the mystery mage from the onslaught of a lesser Terror.

He can see the shock in the mage’s expression, the confusion at being protected so readily and fiercely even before a proper introduction’s been made. She had a habit of doing that, taking in strays.

The last wraith falls with a bolt of energy from Lady Vivienne, and Emery wastes no time in closing the rift. She staggers backwards with the effort, Varric catching her elbow to keep her from falling. The mage watches her arm curiously.

“Fascinating,” he breathes. “How does that work exactly?” He waves a hand, glancing back at where the rift used to be, now just more empty air. “You don’t even know, do you? You just wiggle your fingers around and boom! Rift closed.”

She is at a loss for words and breath, so Blackwall interjects, “something we should call you, serrah?”

“Ah,” the man in question snaps his fingers, “getting ahead of myself again, I see. Dorian of House Pavus, most recently of Minrathous. How do you do?”

In all his years, he’s never actually met a Vint before. Dorian seems to carry himself with an affected air, not intentionally smarmy but playfully superior, the kind of haughty Blackwall used to emulate when doing impressions of the other Orlesian generals to amuse his soldiers. Though Blackwall can’t imagine someone more pompous than the Orlesians, there is something behind Dorian’s smile that straddles the line between genuine and just a tad too forthcoming.

Whatever Blackwall knows of being judged for the actions of one kin, he also knows to trust his instincts, and a smile like that is dangerous. It invites you in, seduces you with pretty words and florid promises, only to take advantage. Vints are known for taking advantage. In some pretty fucking despicable ways.

“Let one Tevinter in and suddenly they’re scurrying out of the walls like roaches,” Lady Vivienne says reproachfully. His lips thin in distaste at the image; she has a way with words that cuts more viciously than a headsman’s axe.

Dorian takes it in stride, ready with a witty rejoinder and joking to Emery about her suspicious friends. Blackwall smiles in spite of himself, because damn right they’re suspicious. They have to be, with all these intrigues and shadows and slights of hand, no one saying things outright and everyone looking to get a piece of the Herald. His tale of time magic sends Blackwall reeling, but she takes it at face value, nodding and questioning but never doubting. He’s thought before that she’s too trusting with those big, earnest eyes. He’s told himself to leave her be.

He holds his tongue for the rest of discussion, even as the magister’s son walks in and tells the rest of their ridiculous story. Time magic. _Time magic._

Dorian bids the party farewell with a gracious smile towards Emery and a flippant comment towards Felix, and Blackwall, while not particularly fond of Dorian and still feeling _off_ down to his toes, can at least respect the certainty the man walks with.

“You don’t see something like that every day,” Varric says as they walk out of the historic building, the wonder Blackwall felt replaced with something that makes his steps feel heavier. He watches Emery flick some demon flesh off her shoulder, her nose scrunched in disgust.

“The magic or the mustache?” she asks.

“The mustache, of course.”

“It was impressive,” she agrees. She glances back at him and Lady Vivienne, her stride faltering as she met his eyes. The mocking sincerity she wore falls into concern as she adds, “wouldn’t you say, Blackwall?”

“Definitely,” he responds. She stares at him for another couple seconds before looking forward again, whistling for her horse.

_Time magic._

He needs a drink.

* * *

The Templars would be safer. Cullen is sure to voice it many times, each firmer than the last in an effort to make her see reason. She _knows_ what they’re capable of, had been on the very path herself, but remains frustratingly steadfast in her belief in the mages.

“The letter from Magister Alexius asks for the Herald of Andraste _by name_ ,” Josephine reminds. “It’s an obvious trap and one I discourage you from walking into blindly.”

There is a tiredness in the Herald’s stance, something old and weary and entirely unsuited to her youth sitting on her shoulders and hunching her spine. She braces herself with her hands on the war table, palms splayed, her ring finger just an inch or so off from the Hinterlands marker. She lifts her head in a deliberate motion.  
  
“We expected this,” she says, measured. “How do you propose we proceed?”

“Some of us would prefer to sit and do nothing,” Leliana says, eying him pointedly.

“Redcliffe Castle is one of the most defensible fortresses in Thedas. It has repelled thousands of assaults,” he returns his gaze to the Herald, trying and failing to put aside the rush of fear at the thought of her attempting to take on the magister’s forces. “If you go in there, _you’ll die_. We will lose the only means we have of closing rifts. I will not allow it.”

It is not until Dorian strolls in – _strolls really is the only word for it_ – and sends her a wink, that Cullen rethinks her motivations. She offers the Tevinter a conspiratorial smile, her eyes staying on him as he turns away to address the table. The curve of her lips and the apples of her cheeks fall, and though she is more relaxed than she has been in the past hour, a tightness in her jaw remains. There is a familiar pity in it, one Cullen felt himself, years and years ago.

One he feels anew.

Pity should not trump strategy, but he will not chastise her for it. He can’t. The Redcliffe mages are indentured to a Tevinter magister, having been forced out of their Circles due to the actions of a single mage hundreds of miles away, Circles that had been little more than well-furnished prisons. And even _here_ , in Haven, they cannot find a reprieve. Prejudice does not go quietly into the night; it is a perpetual conflict, a conscious effort to unlearn that which taints the foundations of one’s perspective. After all this time, he is still acutely aware of the mages on the training ground, never leaves them in his blind spot for a moment more than necessary.

It is time someone does right by them.

She has turned her reverent gaze from Dorian to him, her eyebrows raised in an unspoken _are you alright,_ and in a single nod of his head he tries to convey that her sympathy is not a decade-old memory, but extant and visceral.  
  
The Templars would be safer, Cullen knows, but he recognizes stubborn cert when he sees it, so he persuades her _not_ to throw herself into the crossfire unnecessarily, warns her of the dangers, and does not stop her. There are worse motivations in this world than compassion.

* * *

She had planned on taking the entire company to Redcliffe but was dissuaded of the notion by their ambassador, who asserted that any more than one or two ‘negotiators’ would be seen as a threat. The commander had been incensed at the thought of sending the Herald in without as much manpower guarding her as possible, and despite his many ignorances, Solas found himself in agreeance. The Spymaster was narrowly able to convince them of the safety her hidden agents would provide, but they eventually settled on the least conspicuous option.  
  
Two companions. She would be reasonably safe with the security of two companions.  
  
Solas is far less amiable as she declares, or rather, suggests, in her standard timid fashion, that Sera and the seeker accompany her.  
  
He can see the same concern in the members of her party, though each in a different means of expression. Varric crosses his arms over his chest; Vivienne’s eyes narrow coolly. Behind him, he hears the Iron Bull hum – not in disapproval, but in wary consideration. There is silence as each deliberates the thought.  
  
Solas would trust Cassandra with his life, and had in fact done so on many occasions, her blade rising to defend him just as readily as it does the Herald herself. She is undoubtedly skilled and would fight to her last breath to protect the girl at her side, dwarfed by her impressive stature. A wise choice, yes, but she cannot be everywhere at once.   
  
Sera, while infuriating at the best of times, is more than proficient with a bow and arrow, her speed and stealth a marvel, and one he would comment on more often if she didn’t dismiss his every word with a derisive snort and stubborn contrariety. She cares for the Herald with a ferocity he cannot help but admire, silently and from afar, but she remains brash and impulsive, moving without thought, yearning for conflict.  
  
Solas, striving for rationality, recognizes that any of her compatriots would protect her to the best of their ability, and that he has been given no reason to doubt them in their skill or resolve. His anger spurs not from the notion of being slighted, but because, even in light of his numerous and devastating mistakes, he trusts no one more than himself.  
  
Something wrenches in his chest when he realizes how attached he has become. That _he_ must be the one watching over her. It does not bode well.  
  
Cassandra dutifully steps forward, Sera following suit in a loping fashion. They are capable, Solas reminds himself, and they must protect her where he cannot.  
  
Cullen nods. There are to leave at daybreak.  
  
The Herald’s eyes scan over the group, searching for some sign of dissent. When she meets his own, he bows his head solemnly. “Dareth shiral, da’len.”  
  
Sera makes a series of incomprehensible sounds, intending to mock him. Solas does not dignify it with a response.

* * *

Redcliffe Castle is fabled to be no less than an impenetrable fortress, and Cassandra takes note of the lasting marks of battle on its walls, the slight indents of blades and axes appearing and disappearing with the dance of the lamplight. The banners and tapestries of Redcliffe remain hanging despite Arl Teagan’s absence, the single tower upon red stone. It is merely a geographic representation. Cassandra cannot help but associate it with blood.

The guards are hooded and anonymous, and though they are more or less certain that Alexius has a trap set, Cassandra is surprised by the dread crawling up the back of her neck. She wills herself to remain silent and still, spotting the twitch of Sera’s fingers in her peripheral. For once they are in agreement.

“The invitation was extended only to you, Lady Trevelyan.”  
  
“They’re my handlers,” the Herald explains. “They go where I go.” 

The messenger relents and allows them to follow, Sera in the middle and Cassandra trailing just further behind. The masked eyes mark their every movement, the disquieting sensation of being watched setting Cassandra’s hair on end. Moreover, they are easily outnumbered.

They make their way into the throne room, where the Hero of Ferelden once stood, where she went into the Fade at the risk of her own life to save Arl Eamon and his son. The castle, tarnished by demons and corpses and temptation, had been reclaimed as a symbol of hope.

It has lost that meaning, in Alexius sitting sprawled on its throne. He rises in a calculated motion, conveying great effort just as much as it does predation, a snake slowly wrapping around its victim and toying with his meal. Cassandra’s hand rests on the hilt of her blade.

Now, it is only a matter of time.

* * *

The Herald of Andraste stands before him once again, though now she seems even smaller, a lone figure in the center of the great hall. She walks with leaden steps, her shoulders almost hunched, surveying the room nervously. She is but a child.

A child graced with immense power, power not rightfully hers, power that must be returned to his master.

She holds the pommel of her sword as she addresses him, asks quietly that the First Enchanter be included in their nonexistent negotiations. She is kind. Her hair falls in her eyes, not unlike Felix’s when he was a boy.

Felix stands tall at his right, hands clasped behind his back. It must be done. It must be done.

“The Inquisition needs mages in order to close the Breach,” he states, sitting down. “I have them. What do you offer in exchange?”

“We have many backers among the Orlesian nobility. I’m sure we could find suitable compensation, given time.” She speaks softly, yet it echoes across the stone.

“I’m not sure what the Orlesian nobility could offer me that I do not already possess.”

Alexius cannot draw this out too long, but he must lure them into a sense of security. It is not yet time to strike; it is not ready.

But then Felix steps forward, and everything he has planned for the sake of his son’s life is worthless in just four words.

“She knows everything, father.”

His own son turned against him. The Inquisition aware of the Elder One’s plans.

“He was concerned you had gotten yourself involved in something terrible,” she says. She is almost pleading with him, begging him not to do something worthy of threat.

She is kind.

She is a mistake.

“The Elder One was meant to wield that power. You were unworthy even to stand in his presence!”

Felix pleads. The Herald’s eyes widen the same way his would when Alexius told him a frightening bedtime story, full of abominations and demons, using the lights of candles to make shapes in shadows on the wall.

Dorian appears in a flourish, still every bit the man he trusted with his life, his work, his son.

A traitor.

Alexius launches into a spiel about the glory of Tevinter and how they will rise again, the once and future rulers of the ground they stand upon. Dorian calls his bluff. Smart boy, always a very smart boy.

His men fall with at the swipe of the Inquisition’s blades against their necks.

Felix has his mother’s eyes.

“No!” Dorian shouts, firing off a spell, tampering with volatile magic that even he cannot begin to know the intricacies of. He is too late.

The light is blinding; it is all encompassing; they are gone.

The Herald is gone.

* * *

“Forward. In time.” The Herald’s voice comes out in a deadpan, a dreaded exasperation Dorian’s ready to match with his own quip until he rises from looting the guard’s submerged body. The water in the dungeon is nearly up to his knees, and on her it reaches mid-thigh, chilling literally and figuratively.

She is soaked from the scuffle, the gleam of her armor amplified in the droplets that cling to it, half of her hair dripping and falling from the braids along the sides of her head. The scars on her face seem deeper in the dimness, fresher, but it is not the wounded and somewhat pathetic nature of her appearance that stops him.

Her eyes are grey, a light grey, with a hint of green just around the pupil that he shouldn’t be able to see in such lighting. Luckily, her eyes are blown wide enough to observe it, and she looks around at the stone walls fruitlessly, searching for something unfathomable and unattainable. The poor thing is clearly at her wit’s end, and Dorian would be lying if he said there was no kinship in the notion. The response of _I’m not feeling particularly optimistic either at the moment_ dies on his lips.

They stand, her eyes straying somewhere over his shoulder before returning to the bodies at their feet.

“What was Alexius _trying_ to do?” she asks.

“I believe his original plan was to remove you from time completely,” he starts, and then abruptly stops at the new wave of unmitigated horror that seems to wash over her. He moves to place a reassuring hand on her shoulder, but finds the motion to be both too unfamiliar and too baseless to carry out. His hand falls to his side.

He turns with the ring of keys in his grasp and tries two of them before the third lets him swing the gate open, the resulting clanking and creaking of metal drawing more attention than they ought to call to themselves.

“Come along,” he says, moving through the bars and holding the door open for her. “The fabric of time isn’t very forgiving when it comes to culture shock, I’m afraid.”

Her gaze is fixated on the red lyrium crystals growing out of the walls as she passes him, training on each new one they come across as though she expects it to reach out and grab them.

“Do you think any of the others were sent along with us?”

“Alexius wouldn’t risk catching him or Felix in the crosshairs,” he muses. “They’re probably still where, and when, we left them. In some sense, anyway.”

She breathes out a little louder than normal, and Dorian thinks that it could be mistaken for a laugh, if one were inclined to take it as such.

And he is. Considering their circumstances, he has every right to find positivity wherever it dwells, even if it’s the weak laugh of a girl soaked with water and blood in a dreary dystopian hell-scape.

* * *

Cassandra kneels with a sea of wisps curling around her, strands of red coiling in front of her lips and beneath her chin, fluttering about her eyes and whispering the notes of a melody forgotten long ago.  
  
She will sing louder.  
  
_…mighty of arm and warmest of heart, rendered to dust. bitter is sorrow, ate raw and often, poison that weakens and does not kill…_  
  
It’s Drakonis. A year has passed since tragedy struck anew. Has it only been a year?  
  
_…by gods forsaken, fate emptied of hope, wounded I fell then, by grief arrow-studded, never to heal, death for me come…_  
  
Her faith will not be shaken.  
  
_…eyes sorrow-blinded, in darkness unbroken there 'pon the mountain, a voice answered my call. ‘heart that is broken, beats still unceasing, an ocean of sorrow does nobody drown. you have forgotten, spear-maid of Alamarr, within my creation, none are alone’…_  
  
None are alone. None are alone.  
  
_…gates once bright golden forever shut. heav'n filled with silence…_  
  
But what had she done to deserve this? Had she not served the Maker and His purpose?  
  
Emery stands before her, drenched to the bone but otherwise no worse for wear than when she disappeared a year ago, vanishing in an eruption of light. She is not real. She is a tortured mind’s last ditch attempts at sanity, another hallucination that only leads to hope deferred.  
  
Yet Cassandra cannot ignore her. The Chant dies on her lips, and she dares to hope, just for a moment.  
  
Dorian explains the situation with more tact that the Herald can manage, her hands clenched tight around the hilt of her sword and lips pressed shut, as though she does not trust herself to speak. Her face holds an ineffable pain, twisting her gentle features into something marred and forlorn.  
  
The door to her cell opens, and the Herald kneels in front of her, silent.  
  
Cassandra stands with her, knowing that they will right this blighted world and that she will not live to see it. At the least, she has been given the chance to apologize for her failures. It helps to ease the guilt.

* * *

The dead should stay dead! She shouldn’t be there, all whole and in one piece, not when Sera watched her shatter into nothingness, not even a scrap of fabric! She just up and left, gone into the darkness, and she never came back. Sera waited. She never came.

Except now she has, lip quivering like she’s about to cry. Stupid lyrium shite, messing with her head. This wasn’t a new one, but it had been a good long while since the red made _her_ , and it _never_ made her crying. It only ever laughed, this hollow, echo-y sound, like it was bouncing along metal before it made its way into the air.

She doesn’t recognize the Vint until he speaks with his stupid posh voice, trying to explain away a year of nothing but red. The red was worse than the nothing.

“I promise I’m me,” the Herald says. “Promise.”

Her cell opens and Sera staggers out, the muscles on her legs weak and withered away from disuse. The Herald catches her, crying now, big fat I’m-sorry-tears down her cheeks and off her chin to plink against the stone.

Serves her right!

“Sera, I’m so sorry. I won’t – I wont let this happen to you. I won’t.”

Serves her –

“I’ll go back, and I’ll stop this. Sera? Say something.”

Serves…

“Sera, please. You still have to be in there, _please_.”

No. Shite. It doesn’t.

“It’s probably better that she _isn’t_ after everything that’s happened,” Dorian says.

“Oh, I’m here, pisser,” she growls out, pushing herself off the Herald with a groan. “The day you two flashed off I ran out of arrows making them pay. Fat lot of good a bow does against demons.” Everything aches, the Herald’s still crying, and Sera’s going to shove an arrow right through Alexius’s eye.

“I’ll friggin’ die to spit in their faces.”

“You just might,” Dorian mutters.

* * *

Leliana does not question how she survived or how she got into the castle; she accepts the facts that have been laid before her and begins planning their exit strategy. The broader philosophical implications could be left to a later date.

Or not, in their case. No matter.

She does not miss the horror in Emery’s eyes, but she admits pride in watching resolution form in their depths, a firm dedication to prevent what could generously be described as a waking nightmare.

She marches forward with the knowledge that she will not outlive the hour, her steps those of a martyr affirmed in her belief moments before the fateful slaughter.

* * *

Alexius falls to the ground, bruised and bleeding and, thank the Maker, fucking _gone_ at last, but after all he’s done to them he just lies there like a regular corpse, like he has a right to be something so ordinary. Sera kicks his head for good measure and waits another moment for him to explode into righteous hellfire and disappear beyond the veil, or something just as horrible and magic-y, but he does nothing of the sort.

He’s just there. Dead.

And that scares Sera in a way the red never could.

* * *

“An hour?” She demands, failing to keep the irritation from her voice. The foundations shake, Leliana’s hand gripping Cassandra’s shoulder to steady them both. “The Elder One is upon us! You have to go now!”

In a moment of bravery that will be forever lost, Cassandra and Sera share a look of words unsaid. Sera ruffles Emery’s hair with a sad smile while Cassandra nods, an inscrutable lament in the depths of her eyes. And they turn. They know what they must do.  
  
“I won’t let you die,” Emery spits, begs.  
  
“Look at us,” Leliana sighs, spreading her arms and inviting the Herald to gaze upon the lyrium dragging in the air she breathes, the layered burns branding her skin. “We already have.”  
  
Her eyes brim with tears. Leliana resists the urge to reach out to her and run a soothing hand over her hair. It is truly good to see her again.  
  
Dorian nods to her, his fingers wrapping around Emery’s forearm and guiding her up the steps to begin his work.  
  
“You have as much time as I have arrows,” Leliana calls.  
  
A hushed sob echoes in the throne room, reverberating deep in her bones. Leliana does not look back.

 _Maker, my enemies are abundant._  
_Many are those who rise up against me._  
_But my faith sustains me; I shall not fear the legion,_  
_Should they set themselves against me._

The first wave comes; Sera’s arrows fly with cacophonous laughter; foreign screams ricochet over beleaguered stone.  
  
_I have faced armies_  
_With You as my shield,_  
_And though I bear scars beyond counting, nothing_  
_Can break me except Your absence._

Dorian swears a streak of Tevene. Leliana breathes deeply.

 _Maker, though the darkness comes upon me,_  
_I shall embrace the Light. I shall weather the storm._  
_I shall endure._

Cassandra cries out in agony, a shout ripped from her throat and cut off to hang in the air, sound halted with the swipe of a blade through the column of her neck. Sera’s words are lost beyond the stone, fiery and defiant, but they will never be heard. They die with her.

 _I am not alone. Even_  
_As I stumble on the path_  
_With my eyes closed, yet I see_  
_The Light is here._  
  
Leliana stares down the length of the arrow at the pounding doors, bowstring pulled taut.

 _Draw your last breath, my friends._  
_Cross the Veil and the Fade and all the stars in the sky._  
_Rest at the Maker's right hand,_  
_And be Forgiven._

* * *

Sweat rolls down his brow, his mana long since depleted. The amulet levitates and throws off stray bolts of magic, Dorian swearing as the din outside grows louder and louder and he only needs a minute more, a second more.

He hears the door burst open behind him, the thud of corpses thrown about the room, the Spymaster praying as she fires off arrow after arrow until a woman’s scream sounds and the Herald launches forward in the corner of his eye.

“You move and we all die!” He shouts, grabbing her arm and jerking her towards him, overestimating the strength in the motion as she collides into his side. She does not move away, instead clutching his arm with surprising force and pressing her forehead into his shoulder, his arm naturally rising to shield her as the magic culminates. He throws them through the portal with the last of his strength.

The impact with the stone is jarring, as is the sight of tears on her face, but both are left unnoticed as she helps him to his feet.

“You’ll have to do better than that.” Dorian’s sure that the little exhalation is a laugh this time, a small one, but a laugh nonetheless.  
  
The crescent moon imprints of her nails remain visible on his bicep as she sends Alexius to judgement, and he allows them to ache just on the surface of his skin for a moment, the tips of her nails red with his blood. As his energy returns to him, he heals the marks into small, off-white lines.  
  
(She will apologize profusely for them on the journey back to Haven, but he will simply give her a wry smile and shake his head. Some things must be remembered.)

* * *

The Herald of Andraste is not as tall nor as intimidating as she expected, but what the girl lacks in raw presence, she makes up for in the devotion of her followers. The mage, the archer, the warrior, and the rest of the Inquisition stand dutifully behind her. Anora finds an immediate respect for the young woman, commanding that she rise from her reverent kneel.

It does nothing to quell the rage that burns within her as she returns her attention to the First Enchanter, however.

“Grand Enchanter Fiona, when I granted your mages sanctuary, I thought it was understood that they would not _force_ _my people from their homes_.”  
  
“Your majesty, let me assure you, we never meant for any of this to – “  
  
“Your intentions ceased to matter when my people were threatened,” she bites out. “I am rescinding my offer of sanctuary; the free mages will leave Ferelden at once.”  
  
“But,” the woman’s eyes are pleading, and Anora catches the hint of a familiar face in the desperation written across it, a young man she hasn’t seen in the better part of a decade. “We have hundreds who need protection, your majesty. Where will we go?”

Anora pities the mages, truly, and it is what first led her to grant them a reprieve in her lands, under her rule. But her duty remains foremost to the people of Ferelden, and no amount of sympathy could justify allowing her subjects to suffer undue hardship.

The Herald re-enters the conversation with a nervous half-raised hand, almost as if to ask a question.

“I still need the mages, a little,” she offers. “If you’d be willing to join us.”

Anora holds back a disbelieving laugh and her stomach twists with a not unwelcome thought – Cailan would have liked her.

“And what exactly would this arrangement entail?” The First Enchanter asks.

Not that she has much right to argue against any terms the Inquisition sets, given what the mages have allowed to happen. Servitude would be merciful, and anything more the Maker’s blessing.

“Fighting against the Breach as our allies,” the Herald says as though it were obvious, as though she could not imagine anything else. Her companions, or at least the warrior and the archer elf, show varying degrees of disapproval.

The mage, on the other hand, looks positively delighted.

“I advise you accept the Inquisition’s offer, as alliance or not, you _will_ leave my kingdom,” Anora interjects. The Herald looks torn between backing away slowly and dropping to a kneel again, but after a tense moment mages to tear her attention away from the Queen back to the First Enchanter, her eyes soft.  
  
“We cannot afford to be divided. Stand with us.” Her tone manages to be both definitive and compassionate, a careful line Anora once tried to walk but abandoned when she discovered the merits of regal aloofness. The girl’s warmth, in contrast, does her credit.

“You will not regret giving us this chance,” Fiona smiles, green eyes alight with possibility.

Anora nods once to the room and turns on her heel, her troop of guards pursuing her in formation out of the hall. She has nobility to notify, probably another apostate assassin or coup d’etat to look forward to, and many, many letters to write.  
  
After all, Teagan probably wants his castle back.

* * *

Leliana only hesitates for a moment before returning the hug Emery gives her, though the desperate way her arms looped around her waist alludes to a story she does not want to hear and horrors she does not want to witness.

Josephine hovers a few feet away, hands occasionally darting out and retreating to the edges of her clipboard in stilted half-movements, uncertain of how to proceed. Their arguing has ceased, and though Cullen is still a touch furious that the Herald recruited the mages without consulting anyone, he knows when to hold his tongue.  Josephine spares a glance at him, his expression morphing into something like sorrow.

Blood still stains the Herald’s armor, dried and flaking. She needs to bathe immediately, Josephine mentally notes. This debriefing will be as short as possible; a proper war council can be held once she is clean and rested, the grime of her travels out of her hair and the dread further from her mind.

She slowly unwinds herself from Leliana’s arms, head ducked in shame, but no one moves to reprimand her yet. It is difficult to when they are painfully reminded of not only her youth, but the responsibility they continually place on her shoulders. It is their doing that let her glimpse such a future.

Josephine is often accused of being over-sympathetic by her fellow advisors, but if she is too soft-hearted, Cullen and Leliana are just as much so. Cullen’s voice has lost its demanding tone, and while his words remain accusatory, he delivers with them with a calmness that Josephine prides him on.

“What were you thinking?” He sighs. “The lives that will be lost if they fail…”

The silence hangs over them like a shroud. Josephine finds herself placing a hand on the Herald’s shoulder, squeezing gently. Cassandra exhales.

“I much preferred the circular arguing to all this foreboding,” Ser Pavus says, leaning against the far wall.

The Herald shows the hint of a smile, but no one can find the levity to respond. Ser Pavus adjusts himself uncomfortably in the stillness that follows, and Josephine is glad to see that some emotional tact resides somewhere in his head, beneath the elegantly coiffed hair and debonair grin.

“We’ll reconvene in the war room,” Josephine says. “When you’re ready,” she adds to the Herald.

The group disperses until it is only the Herald and Ser Pavus, Josephine sparing the pair a glance over her shoulder. Cullen is muttering tiredly beside her, already drafting plans to contain possible abominations, Cassandra murmuring in the affirmative. Josephine writes it down without thought, watching as the Herald and the Inquisition’s newest addition walk out onto the grounds, light streaming in through the Chantry’s open doors.

He is able to coax a laugh out of her.

In light of everything that has occurred, Josephine will add it to her growing list of small miracles. Below Cassandra stealing Cullen’s helmet and giving her best impression of him, above her signed copy of The Tale of the Champion. Small things. Unthinkable things.

The Herald laughs again.

Josephine smiles.

* * *

Sera ran off the moment they got back, sealing herself inside the tavern behind two casks of ale and a venomous scowl. Bull gives her space and makes sure everyone does the same, her corner in the bar always waiting for her, unoccupied. Cassandra has taken to hacking at the training dummies with a renewed vigour, Cullen approaching for a word and retreating when faced with her glare. Bull’s been following the same regiment of avoidance and minimal eye contact with the frustrated Seeker.  
  
In contrast, Bull keeps a strict eye on the Vint. He seems to be an open book, but Bull knows better than to take that at face value. It’s always the pretty ones you have to watch out for. Still, he stands by the apothecary and smiles at everyone who passes, and Bull has yet to see anyone return it but the kid and himself. He wrings his hands and rubs at non-existent stubble when he speaks. He’s a pretty one, but the kind that’s desperate to be more.  
  
He worries the most about the boss, since she hasn’t properly met anyone’s eyes – or eye, in his case – since she left for Redcliffe. It’s actually kind of impressive, given that everyone has been dogging her steps and watching her with a focused precision. Josephine’s been walking the grounds to observe her while she ambles around Haven, and Cassandra never hovers too far off. Now, she does so from her spot on the training grounds, watching the kid tend to her horse.  
  
She brushes the Forder’s mane with soft cooing sounds, standing up on her toes to reach the top of his head.                                
  
Krem’s off to Therinfal Redoubt to investigate the Templars at Josephine’s request, asking that the mission stay strictly between Bull, the advisors, and his Chargers. If the kid had known about it, she would have insisted on going herself. Normally, Bull would choose to let her decide her own course of action; seeing her now, closed off and skittish, leads him to agree with Josephine.  
  
He is silent as he approaches, no easy feat considering his size, and asks “Boss, you alright?” from a few feet away, trying not to alarm her too much.  
  
The kid jumps, startled from whatever stupor she had fallen into, head ducking as she grips the horse’s reigns.  
  
“Yeah, yeah. Of course.” She gives him a hollow smile.  
  
He knew the straightforward approach wasn’t going to work; she has no reason to unload whatever’s bouncing around in her skull on him more so than Josephine or Varric. Best to work with what he knows to be there, and as sympathetic towards mages as she is, no one walks out of the shit show at Redcliffe without a healthy does of terror towards unchecked magic. That’s his in.  
  
“Heard Alexius sent you into the future.”  
  
She nods in the affirmative, exiting the horse’s pen and coming to stand in front of him.  
  
“Every time you think you understand magic, it turns around and pulls something even more bat-shit insane out of the Fade,” he continues.  
  
“Like time travel,” she says, running a hand through her hair.  
  
_“Time travel_ ,” he repeats.  
  
“Yep.”  
  
Her horse whinnies behind them.  
  
“I’m not the only one who thinks this is all fucking crazy, right?”  
  
“Oh Maker, _yes_ ,” she breathes, and then everything bursts out at a dizzying speed, rambling off about red lyrium and time crystals and Tevinter magisters. It comes out in a rush, and soon enough they sit cross-legged, leaning against the stable’s fence. He grunts at all the appropriate parts, nods and shakes his head as necessary, making mental notes of the larger points like Empress Celene’s assassination and the _demon army_  for his own investigation into Corypheus’s next move.

Some of the snow’s melted, and she’s taken to plucking out the various flowers by their feet and making a crown out of them as she speaks, her hands shaking without something to occupy them.  
  
Sometime between waking up in a water-logged dungeon and the fear in Sera’s eyes, Blackwall sits down on her other side. He wordlessly takes the crown she passes into his hands and places it on his head, a few petals jostling off the stems and floating down leisurely into his lap.  
  
Bull’s still looking into what Blackwall is running from, what horrible thing he left behind when he moved to solitary recruitment. His Ben-Hassrath contact has a letter on the very subject waiting in his tent, but it can wait until she’s finished having her say.  
  
She finally tapers off in a description of Queen Anora’s dress in the early evening, a string of flowers draped around both of Bull’s horns and a couple lone ones weaved into Blackwall’s beard. She’s half asleep as Bull nudges her side, pulls her into a standing position and ruffles her hair, petals and blades of grass falling onto her shoulders and around her feet.  
  
“You feeling any better?” He asks.  
  
Blackwall watches for a response, but the concern on his face edges into a dumb grin at the ring of Prophet’s Laurel around her head.  
  
“Yeah,” she nods, the sun behind her setting over the mountaintops and casting fractured colours out onto the frozen lake. “Yeah, I think so.”  
  
“Good.”

* * *

The Herald has allied with the rebel mages of Redcliffe. Moisture from the stalactites above him drips onto the page’s corner and the ink begins to run with it, but the writing is still legible. It’s strong, forceful writing, a purposeful determination behind it. The lettering is familiar and nostalgic, leaning slightly to the left with a sort of square shape about them, save for loopy g’s and y’s.

He’s not sure how Varric got this letter to him, since even Hawke doesn’t know his current whereabouts.

(Her last letter is next to his bedroll. It’s detached and business-oriented, detailing movements of rogue Templar groups in his area at the time, until she slips and tells him about the grey hair she found. He resisted the urge to write back and tell her about the grey at his own temples and the ways his hands ache when he flexes them after gripping his staff for too long.)

He palms the growing stubble along his chin absentmindedly as he writes out a response, parts of it crossed out ~~and rewritten and rewritten~~ and rewritten as he tries to find the right way to phrase things and another voice urges him to skip the pleasantries and get to the point.

 ~~Vengeance~~ Justice has no sense of time or striking at the prime moment; it does not need a plan, so long as absolution is reached. It is also no quieter than it has ever been, demanding to see her and judge her intentions, to enlist her help in their ever-raging battle.

Anders does agree; he just also knows that Varric promised that Bianca had a few things to say him should they ever meet again, and he’d rather not encourage an itchy trigger-finger. Meeting the Herald in person, at least under current circumstances, was impossible – but who better to show the change of times than a Templar recruit in full support of freedom for mages?

He sighs, running a hand through his hair, crumpling the page and then deciding to burn it. He blows the ashes off his lap and starts again.

The letter, only ten or so lines but taking hours to finish, ends with _~~where do her allegiances lie~~_ _~~I must speak with her~~ could a meeting be arranged? _ It’s sent through a myriad of couriers, and though he is waiting for a response, he packs up and tells the group of rebels with him to move out, confident that Varric’s eyes on him will track him further east if need be.

He’s proven correct when a reply arrives, an elven mage from the forests off of Wycome handing it to him with a curious smile. Anders dismisses her, takes the letter to his bedroll and opens it carefully.

 _Not on your life, Blondie_.

Flames crackle from his fingers and the page slowly turns to ash. A blue light flares in the confines of the cave before he gets a handle on it, the light receding until only the candle’s glow remains.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last month was hectic, to put it lightly. It's funny how parts of this I wrote before I had even finished the chapter, and the rest of it I had to grind out in quick shifts in the past few weeks. I love Dorian too much; that's the problem. Playing a bit fast and loose with the Chant of Light - the bits of verses quoted are first chapter of Andraste:1 and the first chapter of the Canticle of Trials.
> 
> I may also have been playing Dragon Age 2 over again, which would explain why Anders pops up out of nowhere.
> 
> Hope you liked it! Lemme know if you spot any mistakes, and as always, feedback is appreciated (and usually has the added effect of making me dance around my room a little).


	4. In Your Heart Shall Burn

Emery walks into the war room in full armor, ready for the task ahead. If any of them notice the way her hands tense around her pommel, they call no attention to it.  
  
Cassandra falls into step beside her as they begin the march towards the Breach. Cullen disappears to oversee the mages’ deployment. Josephine rushes to her office.  
  
Leliana watches all of this and notes the finer details. Cassandra clutches the hilt of her sword just as fiercely as Emery, and it gleams in the light flooding through the open doors in a way that speaks of meticulous sharpening, an idle action to occupy restless hands. Cullen’s hair is unruly from gauntleted fingers running through it, a nervous tic he has never mastered. He leans forward ever so slightly as he walks, determined to reach his destination as soon as humanly possible. Josephine's normally graceful movements stutter, legs torn between standing resolute and enclosing herself within her office’s stone walls, apart from the danger and the possibility of failure.    
  
Leliana shows no fear, herself, but internally she can fully admit the panic coursing through her. It does not so much unnerve as provide clarity, lending itself to the formation of countless contingency plans and a keen awareness of her surroundings.  
  
Emery's traveling companions stand in clumps outside the Chantry doors. Sera pouts impetuously but cannot mask the worry in her eyes, Blackwall next to her with arms crossed and a caring frown. Vivienne, lone and prideful, gives Emery an encouraging nod. Varric, Bull and Dorian each give her fair attempts at cheering smiles, but she does not see them in staring ahead.  
  
Leliana suspects that she does not wish to see their hope, should she fail.  
  
Solas joins their crusade at Emery’s other side, and for a moment her dread is bare on her face, eyes wide and lips pulled thin in a frightened grimace. It is mirrored in Solas’s, though more subtly, in the slight pinch of his brow and the tightening of his jaw.  
  
They continue on wordlessly. Scout Harding now walks at Leliana’s side, saying nothing and yet saying everything in her decision to follow. More join their trek in her wake, and Emery’s head whips around to stare at the growing procession of shopkeepers and quartermasters, civilians and soliders alike. It is Emery who marvels at their devotion, but the Herald who leads them.  
  
The pull of sinister magic taints the air. Leliana cannot describe it better than a thickness in her throat and a coating of grime in her lungs as she breathes. It had at first reminded her of Orzammar, the way the dust of mined rock settled in the air, but now she deems it something fouler. Scout Harding’s face twists in disgust, but she does not falter in her step.  
   
They stop before entering the Temple, a crowd gathering with Leliana at its head. Emery, Cassandra and Solas continue forth. The mages are already in position.  
  
Solas’s voice carries out over the valley, loud even with the crackle of the looming rift.  
  
“Mages! Focus past the Herald! Let her will draw from you!”  
  
No one dares breathe in the seconds that follow, an infinity of time passing from one dull beat of her heart to the next. Leliana hears it in her skull, thrumming in her ears, and verses of the chant recite themselves under her breath unbidden, a time old refuge of fortitude.  
  
_In dread I looked up once more  
And saw the darkness warp and crumble -  
_  
Light surges, power ebbs and flows through the air, the hairs on her neck stand on end.  
  
And it is over.  
  
Emery has closed the Breach.

* * *

_– alive, we’re alive, she did it, the Herald –_

_– chilling, chapped lips, crystallizing air and blood –_

Blood trickles down his daggers. His hair falls in his eyes but he can’t stop, he cannot slow down, not when she must be warned, not when he can help, not when he can do more.

_– more booze in his veins than wine, more spring in his step than winter, he spins her, she is his favorite tale –_

_– aching feet march steady, theirs to do, theirs to die –_

Another Templar falls as he stabs their side, and he wills them to die faster. There’s no time, and he’s sorry, he’s sorry. He wishes it could be different but it can’t. He can hear them, snippets of them, but they can’t hear him from so far away, drowning in laughter.

_– laughter, lips, lacquered scarlet –_

_– na via lerno victoria –_

_– his hands trace jagged pieces, welded together and mismatched and never to be whole again, holy without being whole, kind without being cursed, it hums and hums but softer, softer as he breathes –_

_– soon, now, now, the horizon behind us, they perish now, now –_

The bells toll for her. Ringing, clashing, caution. They have made time, in minutes, in seconds. He winces as he hears her but does not stop running, only shields his ears, her words louder than screams and clearer than glass, too bright to look at, too effervescent, glowing, green. He murmurs her thoughts as he runs, he cannot lose her now that he can hear her, now that he feels her fear and her grief and her pain.  
  
“I can’t come in unless you open!”

 _–_ _save him –_

Cole doesn’t need to be saved. They do.  
  
“I came to warn you – to help! People are coming to hurt you,” he tells her.  
  
She peers up at him – _searching, seeing, serving._  
  
“The Templars come to kill you. The Red Templars went to the Elder One.”  
  
Her eyes swim with questions and Cole can hear them, all of them at once, a meshed chorus of why's and how’s and who’s and what’s. The Commander – _blue, bemused, belligerent_ – leads their charge.  
  
_For all of us!_

* * *

“Herald!” Cassandra calls out, but she is too late, she is too late, the Red Templar’s blow to her ribs lands with an impetus that sends her flying, landing in a heap in the snow.  
  
“Emery!”

Emery rises to her knees with stilted movements, her hand darting out to support her weight. The other clutches her side, and when she brings it away it is slick with blood. She cocks her head in a disbelieving fascination, a perverse warp of the motion’s usual bright inquisitiveness, and her eyes glaze over at the sight.

Cassandra is over her in the space of two breaths, heaving her up out of her kneel and over towards the trebuchet. She’s shouting for Solas, wherever he is, as Emery leans against the structure’s side and wretches.  
  
“Cass, catch!” Iron Bull hurls a health potion towards her before slashing at the Red Templar at his back. She does so just as Vivienne appears in a flash of icy blue light, a wave of warmth emitting as her next spell cascades over Emery’s side. Cassandra tips her head back and forces the elixir down the girl’s throat despite her garbled protests, and unless her eyes deceive her, there is fear in the enchanter’s eyes beneath her excessively ornate mask.  
  
The clash of blades sounds just behind them, and her head swivels to find Iron Bull fighting off another two Templars.

Emery’s breathing evens out and the flow of blood ceases, and in another few moments she gains the strength to push Cassandra off of her, propping herself up on her elbows.

“The trebuchet,” she slurs. “Aim it.”

Vivienne fade-steps over to Bull and slashes out at one Templar with a blade of mana, Bull driving his axe through the other’s skull. Emery attempts to sit up but only succeeds in worsening the ache in her side. Her head drops back into the snow.  
  
Bull turns the trebuchet’s crank as Vivienne stands to watch the perimeter.  
  
Cassandra kneels beside her, watching her eyelids flutter and her chest rise and fall with steady breaths. Corpses made of flesh and crystal surround them, and Cassandra can swear that they sing, murmuring a chirping sort of sound that’s just a smidgen too far off to properly make out. Emery’s armor is caked in it, glimmering with blood-like lyrium – or lyrium-like blood, Cassandra cannot tell. Emery pushes her hair out of her face, a streak of blood smeared across the bridge of her nose from the side of her palm.  
  
“I believe that’s the Champion’s trademark,” Cassandra says.  
  
Emery peers at through her heavy-lidded eyes, offering a quizzical look.  
  
“The blood. Across your face. It looks like – actually, never mind,” Cassandra stammers out. She moves to one knee, extending an arm towards her. “They’ll be more coming.”  
  
Emery slowly smiles in understanding but says nothing, grasping the proffered forearm and allowing Cassandra to pull her up. Bull gives the crank a final turn.  
  
“All yours, Boss,” he calls.  
  
The boulder flies with a sense of finality, the avalanche of snow accompanied by Bull’s cheering and a rueful sigh from Vivienne. Cassandra lies somewhere between the two, the thrill of victory rushing through her veins and the weight of mortality on her conscience as heavy as it has ever been.  
  
Bull is halfway through lifting a laughing Emery onto his shoulders when there is a change in the winds, a hulking shadow flittering over the tops of the forest. Cassandra looks up.  
  
She wishes she hadn’t.

* * *

Bugger, frigging demon, old god _shite_ , marches with an army of freaking Templars with red lyrium sticking out of their arses and breaks down their doors and burns her favourite bar!  
  
The only bar.  
  
Whatever. It’s still her favourite.  
  
She pulls Flissa off the floor and half-drags, half-carries her up the snowy steps and tells her she’s going to be alright if she can just take the next step, and the next one, and the next one. Something explodes to her right and the flames cascade up into the air and even from this far off, Sera can feel the skirting edge of the heat all along her side. The air gets blurry with it.

Flissa squeals and flinches away, nearly throwing Sera off balance. She’s less accommodating for the rest of the trek, more or less tossing her to Chancellor Roderick _– Rod-dick, more like –_ and then she fires three arrows in rapid succession, unnaturally shiny blood pouring from three matching wounds in the Red Templar’s necks.  
  
Fucking stupid, that’s what this is. A whole crock of fucking stupid shit that she did _not_ sign up for. Inquisition was supposed to be making things better for the little people, taking out baddies with the good guys, even if they were organized and official and sometimes rubbing elbows with the skeevy nobles she’s supposed to be sticking it to.

She kneels in front of one of the Templars. He’s got an overbite and messily cut bangs, and his eyes are the same colour as the sky the morning the Blight ended, this cozy blue with tangents of red skittered across it. The red threads through his skin too.  
  
From far off to the left she can hear Blackwall shouting, and she doesn’t have time to think about where this Templar came from and whether or not he got along his mum or if he liked to bake or if Templars even knew _how_ to bake and –

She grits her teeth and wrenches an arrow from the Templar’s neck, a fresh fountain of blood spurting out. She flinches away with a hiss. Blood on her favourite tunic too now.  
  
Her only tunic.  
  
_Ugh_.

* * *

Sera springs off the branch of a tree to his left, Threnn breathing heavily behind him. An arrow lodges in the Behemoth’s chest, and as it turns towards the source, another finds the crystallized flesh of its back. Blackwall takes advantage of the disorientation, knocking the thing back another few feet with his shield. Threnn lashes at it, catching it across the chest, and Blackwall is lunging towards its gut when it spins around suddenly, tearing at its back.  
  
Someone is perched on the bloody thing’s shoulders, and before Blackwall can make sense of it the figure is driving two blades into its skull. It claws aimlessly before toppling over, the man rolling off into a crouch, facing away from them. He rises gracefully but hunches in his posture, twirling the daggers in his grip. He turns slowly, and in the blink of an eye stands not three feet away.  
  
Blackwall flinches away on instinct, sword and shield raised once more before he reminds himself that this man – _has he ever seen a man move that fast?_ – is now an ally. A creepy bastard, definitely, with his twiddling fingers and the brim of his hat covering his face, but an ally nonetheless.  
  
“Hello,” he says.  
  
“Uh, hi,” Blackwall responds.  
  
The boy takes a step closer and raises a hand, almost as if to reach out to touch him, but then he stops. He looks up to the sky, and Blackwall catches a fringe of white-blonde hair and the most piercing blue eyes he’s ever seen, and in another blink, the boy has disappeared altogether.  
  
Blackwall whirls around on the spot, searching for some sign of his presence, but there is neither hide nor tail abound. The boy, whoever he was, is gone, but Sera is too preoccupied staring at the sky to notice.

“Fucking hell,” she says.  
  
Blackwall raises his gaze to the night sky, seeing the patches of constellations between clouds of smoke, and then he catches its outline as it passes the moon, watches it change its course to swoop down towards them, and by then its already far too late.

“ _Fucking hell_ ,” he repeats.  
  
Then they’re running to the gate with everything they’ve got, because they’ll be damned if that dragon gets to the Herald before they do.

* * *

She is a force to be reckoned with when she needs to be, small yet undeniably mighty as she beats down the door, the wood splintering with each blow. The quartermaster moans feebly from inside, lost beneath the roar of flame and the groan of weakening wood. Vivienne freezes the door, Emery’s next hit shattering it, and then she’s throwing her shield to the ground and bounding inside, hurtling over debris.  
  
Her sword lays forgotten at the threshold, dropped before she began her onslaught against the blocked door. Its blade glitters with something translucent and crimson, blood-like but unmistakably alien in the way it catches the light of the scorching flames.  
  
She stumbles out supporting Seggrit’s weight, but he pushes himself off and begins to hobble towards the Chantry unprompted. Sensible, Vivienne observes.  
  
Emery moves to pick up her sword, her fingers twisting around the hilt as the building collapses. She dives out of the way nearly in time, crying out as slivers embed themselves in her calves. Her blood is a stark contrast to the fallen snow.  
  
Vivienne moves to help her up, but with gritted teeth she is already on her feet, dashing off towards Commander Lysette and the Templars lashing out at her. She wields her broadsword as though it were a rapier, struggling to parry and dodge with such a heavy weapon. It is not until Vivienne is behind her and lashing out with her own blade that she realizes the girl’s shield lies abandoned beneath the remains of Seggrit’s hut.  
  
The barrier Vivienne casts nearly costs her a limb, but the offending Templar falls with the lunge of Emery’s sword into her chest. The glow of defensive magic dances over her as she pushes the lyrium-addled woman off her blade with the heel of her boot, free hand massaging tentatively at her arm.  
  
Vivienne must ask her where she learned to fence, but certainly at a later date. She hands Emery the shield of a fallen Templar.  
  
“I’d advise you not to misplace this one,” she scolds.  
  
Emery does not seem to have heard; with her sword sheathed at her hip, she grips the shield with both hands, staring at the Templar insignia with brow furrowed and jaw set, a distinctive mourning in her eyes and an frustration in the purse of her lips. Her contemplation only lasts a moment before she puts the shield on her back, yet it speaks volumes.  
  
The metal emblem of the sword is dashed with sparkling blood. Emery takes off running towards the apothecary at Adan’s yell.

* * *

He is sending her to her death.

She had taken to Roderick’s plan immediately, and Cullen now instructs her just as quickly as to what must be done. It is only in the quiet moments of Roderick’s profession of faith in her that he stops to consider the enormity of what they ask.

For a child of nobility, Lady Trevelyan had seemingly never learned to school her features into something passive. She held her tongue in disagreement, a quality which their Ambassador had been delighted to discover until it meant the Herald would often leave her own opinion unvoiced in meetings, carefully placing herself in the conversation’s background with murmurs of assent. Yet one only ever needed to meet her eyes to ascertain her thoughts, her expressive face displaying them clear as day. Both had been habits the advisors planned to break her of.

It is in part why that as she stands before him – _barely up to my shoulder_ – with a barren neutrality, entirely unreadable, it unnerves him to no end.

Her eyes are closed, and in not being able to glean anything from them, he turns to her stance. Every movement is laced with an innate fear, a slight hunch in her posture and a hitch in her breathing, yet she makes no attempt to quell it. Her eyes then open and meet his, face still frighteningly tranquil, and she nods once before turning on her heel in a quick motion as if she would lose her nerve otherwise. The green emanating from her hand casts shadows, her tremors causing subtle, almost imperceptible flickers in the way the light bathes the hall’s sparse furnishings as it surges.

Her knees crack audibly against the Chantry’s stone without her wrists to catch her fall, her right hand preoccupied in cradling the left, a swift intake of breath accompanying the impact but otherwise no acknowledgement of pain. The green flares in her clenched fist, a slight gasp escaping her gritted teeth as she forces herself to stand again, almost lost to the whistle of the wind outside the barricaded doors.

Cullen’s mouth opens, closes, opens again, and before he can say something, not that he has any idea what to say, she takes a shuddering breath, one that sounds suspiciously like a sob. Then her hand – the normal one, the other now pressed flat against the armor of her stomach – lands on his bracer.

He freezes, uncertain, before she gently pushes him in the direction of the passageway. When he shows no inclination of moving, she does so again, more forceful this time. He obliges.

“Let that thing hear you,” he says.

He is sending her to her death, and in her retreating form he sees glimpses of women whose courage he very much admired, whom he never got the chance to tell of it. He is making this mistake thrice over in watching her go.

He is sending her to her death.

* * *

The passageway is a tight squeeze for someone Bull’s size, not to mention the way his horns scrape against the stone walls whenever it narrows, and he barely has enough room to turn sideways, let alone keep up a steady pace. He, Krem and Minaeve are at the back of the evacuation, Krem guarding his back as he adjusts Minaeve in his arms, careful not to bash her skull in against the side of the tunnel. No one speaks.  
  
He grunts as his horn meets rock again but doesn’t mind the pain, a bit too preoccupied on remembering the poor excuse for a smile Dorian gave him as he trailed past or the self-loathing in Blackwall’s eyes, the way he forced himself to take each step forward.   
  
The cave’s light has dwindled into pitch blackness, Vivienne’s flickering ball of flame rounding a corner and only leaving a dissipating glow on the tunnel’s next turn. She had scoffed when Cullen directed her away from Emery’s side, then seethed when he was insistent. The fireball teeters to the right every couple of seconds as her control wavers.  
  
Krem breathes in, his nose whistling, and Bull remembers the way it broke the tension at their first meeting on the Storm Coast, Krem blushing to the roots of his hair while the kid fought off giggles.  
  
As practiced as he is at compartmentalizing, it can’t stop his breath hitching as he remembers her face the second before they swung open the Chantry doors. She was terrified – beyond terrified, she was scared out of her goddamn mind because of the fucking dragon outside, controlled by an omnipotent darkspawn, and she was riding out to face it head on because that’s what was being asked of her, and she does what’s asked of her without question.  
  
The first and most important thought Bull had when Krem gave his report on the Inquisition was _who’s the Inquisitor,_ and Krem only shrugged. The kid had supposed Cassandra would take up the mantle, and Bull agreed that she was the best option they had, but even she was too focused on the minutia to think about the big picture.  
  
The only choice left was the kid herself, and he hadn’t pegged her for a leader then. She inspired loyalty, sure, but she was still soft and impressionable, too caring and emotionally driven. She was afraid of making mistakes and others suffering for it.  
  
But that hadn’t stopped her from making the tough decisions when they fell to her. She isn’t their strongest, their smartest, or their best with a blade, but she does what needs to be done.  
  
And that’s what a leader needs to be.  
  
If they make it out alive, he’ll gather up the Inquisition and have Krem axe open a few casks in her honour. Her too pale eyes and her toothy grin, the way she refused to leave a man behind. They’ll drink to who she was and who she could have been.  
  
And then Bull will flay Corypheus alive, slowly, painfully, and most importantly, _personally_.

* * *

The Veil is his greatest and most devastating mistake; he has seen the libraries with tattered pages strewn across the winds of the Fade, the crumbling fortresses, the imprints of lives he ruined, lives he stole before their time.  
  
Allowing Corypheus to obtain the orb, however, is a close second.  
  
The creature is monstrous, towering above them with gashes across its face, stitches pulling its lips in warring directions to give it a permanent grimace, twisted and harsh. It would be worthy of the barest semblances of pity, were it not dangling Emery in the air with a bone-crushing grip.  
  
Corypheus tosses her to the ground unceremoniously, the impact breaking something in her arm, the crack of it loud beneath the hum of approaching flame. She rolls over to face them, tears welling in her eyes as she meets Solas’s gaze.  
  
There is a blaze in his chest, a mingling self-piteous grief and righteous fury that he plans to unleash on this mangled shadow of divinity. His eyes burn a fervent blue with welling magic, his staff near vibrating as it conducts the surging power, but it goes numb as she pushes herself up with a hard stare. His scowl deepens at the fear lying beneath it.  
  
“ _Run_ ,” she chokes out.  
  
A resolve sweeps over him, Cassandra mirroring it in the corner of his eye as she moves to stand her ground. However, Varric does not need to be told twice, yanking both of them back with gloved hands gripping their sleeves. They break out into a run, and Solas does not falter, not as the dragon’s screech pierces his ears, not as her cries ring out in the valley, but it does not change the unshakable truth.  
  
He has condemned her once more.

* * *

He lets go of the elf’s sleeve once they’re deep into the underbrush, after he’s regained his bearings.  
  
The mountain air is still now that the dragon has descended, the great span of its wings no longer shaking the current and its deafening roar hushed to the occasional groan of fire. Haven is ablaze, the light of the arson traveling through the trees and casting specks of light across the Inquisition’s armor. They play across the Seeker’s breastplate every few steps, illuminating its scrutinizing eye.  
  
The rumble of the dragon is distant. Varric curses the overactive imagination of a writer in the flashing image of Bright Eyes cowering before it, her eyes blown wide with fear, and he can see Corypheus’s gnarled face glaring down at her, sneering at the measly shield she picked off a fallen Templar.

Maker’s _tits_ , they left her there with only that fucking shield standing between her and the mother of all darkspawn.

The first soul he spots is Buttercup, glowing elven eyes narrowed and her arrow already trained upon him before she lowers it with recognition and a mutter about sneaky little dwarves. They are well past the treeline now, plunged into near darkness with only the faint silhouettes of figures outlined by moonlight.  
  
Curly approaches them with the dutiful march of a soldier, and he holds out an arrow to Varric, the head wrapped in a cloth soaked with lamp-oil. Even in the sparse light of the forest Varric can make out the way the Commander’s head hangs, the defeat in the set of his shoulders.  
  
They just. Left her there. Hell, _he_ even dragged Chuckles away.  
  
Varric can’t even meet Curly’s eye, but the man understands the sudden paralysis of guilt anyway, handing the arrow off to Buttercup.  
  
She turns, her shoulder muscles taut as she pulls an arrow from her quiver and allows Chuckles to douse its head in flame. She notches it with careful fingers, elegant and deadly. She closes one eye and presses her lips thin before her form angles towards the sky.  
  
The collective breath of the Inquisition is held. She adjusts for a change in the wind.  
  
The arrow flies.

* * *

It’s a speck of light at the edge of the horizon line, but it’s all she needs.  
  
“Lovely talking to you,” Emery gasps out. “Let’s never do it again.”  
  
She kicks at the lever and runs, the beginnings of Corypheus’s tirade lost to the rumble of cascading snow. There’s a cave entrance twenty feet off.  
  
The beat of wings tells her Corypheus has escaped his timely demise, but it doesn’t matter. They made it.  
  
_They made it._  
  
It’s the last thought she has before she dives, the darkness swallowing her whole.

* * *

She’s not dead.

Her chest aches and she can’t move her wrist and she can hear the blood rushing in her ears and the cold has long since seeped into her bones. The icicles above glitter menacingly in the hollow of the cave. A split wooden board is half pinned underneath her, splinters piercing through the thinner chain mail on her sides.

They made it out through the pilgrims’ passage way; she saw the arrow; they’re alive. A sigh of relief tumbles from her lips, but it cuts off into a groan as her chest seizes painfully. After minutes of failure, she finally manages to push herself up onto her elbows, the grunt she lets out echoing in the dimly lit cave. Her breath crystallizes in front of her.  
  
Emery cries out as she stands, pain lancing up her leg. She grits her teeth to prevent any further outbursts as she limps forward, hoping no one heard her and at the same time terrified that no one was there to hear her at all.

The path gives way into a small clearing, curtain-like ice hanging from its ceiling. The step she takes forward is agony, as is the next, her eyes pinching shut in pain. The wave of cold that rushes over her is unsettlingly familiar, and she prays that she is wrong to its origin.  
  
She is not. The despair demons shriek and claw at her, and after everything she has survived it is difficult not to laugh. Two measly despair demons. Her grand death. The mark starts to heat in her hand, and she raises it in question, in confusion. Her arm shoots out of its own volition, a violent spasm that sends her lurching forward, and the mark erupts into flame in her palm.  
  
There’s a scream, it’s ear-splitting and its everything and everywhere, and it’s coming from _her_ and everything is too _too_ much. Her arm is burning and she can’t breathe and –

It’s gone.

The mark doesn’t hurt anymore.  
  
It’s still there, green and fervent, and her wrist is still swollen and agonizing to move, but the scald of the mark is gone as quickly as it came.

The demons are nowhere to be seen.  
  
She heaves a breath and regrets it immediately, the air freezing her lungs and sending her to her knees, coughs wracking her frame.

The wind howls at the mouth of the cave, snow as far as the eye can see. Walking out into the storm would be suicide.

But staying put would be, too.  
  
Emery marches, and tries not to think about whether or not Corypheus followed their path out of the woods and burned them to smoking cinders, or if they’re mourning her, or if she’ll last to see them at all.

* * *

She crumbles when they call out to her – _crumbles_ , as Josephine cannot discern a better word for the way she collapses into the snow, limbs folding in on themselves. It spurs the Commander forward, pulling his mantle off in one smooth motion and wrapping it around the Herald’s form, picking her up with little effort and beginning a swift march back to camp.

Leliana and Cassandra fall into step just behind them, and it is only at Leliana’s urging look that Josephine herself begins to move her feet.

The Herald is awake, Josephine believes, judging by the way she squirms in the Commander’s arms, or perhaps it’s idle trembling to generate some sort of warmth. With deliberate strides, Josephine matches pace with the Commander and sweeps her eyes over the two of them. He is solemn and his emotions indecipherable as he keeps a steady march, looking ahead with the determination he has long been fabled for. Josephine admires his detachment, but cannot herself emulate it.  
  
She can make out the blue tinge of the Herald’s lips from where she stands, and without thought Josephine begins murmuring to her. It’s complacent nonsense, and she can barely hear herself beneath the howl of the Frostbacks’ telltale wind, but the important parts make it through. Praises like _bravery_ and _fortitude_ , and assurances like _warmth_ and _blankets,_ and then she’s saying _sorry_ , repeating it on end until the word loses meaning. She does not even know if the Herald is conscious to hear the apology.

The tidal wave of anguish hits her in full force then, her delight at seeing the Herald alive – _only just_ – overshadowing the guilt that had nestled in the depth of her lungs, an inescapable weight that plagued each breath and word that left her lips. The bickering and planning of the past few days had served as suitable distraction, yet it stays situated in the back of her thoughts that they had left the Herald of Andraste to die, to sacrifice herself, and Josephine was as horrified for it as she was grateful.

But the scales are tipped ever so slightly towards self-disgust and panic upon noticing that the frail form in Ser Rutherford’s arms has become stationary save for the slow and uneven rise and fall of her chest. She is naught but sixteen, or so she has told them, as Josephine has been overcome more and more often with the sinking feeling that the Herald is desperate to be as useful as possible, and will tell them anything they would like to hear so long as she can help.

It is that eagerness to please that reminds Josephine how _young_ she is. How naïve. How lucky they were that it was she who wields the mark, and how lucky they are that she has returned to them in any capacity.

She appreciates such noble actions from the Herald, but she will not be allowing them again.

* * *

It is with great effort and the endurance of many harsh exclamations and bitter slanders of character that the blonde elf is finally dragged away from the Herald’s bedside by the Warden. She takes to beating her fists against his back as he carries her off over his shoulder, and it would have been a heartwarming scene were it not so saturated with unspoken fear. Mother Giselle ignores the distancing elf’s indignant shrieks in favour of listening to the Herald’s breathing again.  
  
Steady. That is more than they, after leaving her to stand for them all, should hope for. Having her return to them is already more than they deserve.

Ambassador Montilyet’s voice has long since lost its placating cadence, now accusatory and brusque as she argues with the Commander. He throws his hands up in frustration. Leliana watches the exchange with a shrewd gaze but does not deign to speak, and Lady Cassandra stalks away from the fire altogether, time better spent pouring over maps and planning their route. The group has been arguing for well over an hour now, and will likely continue until sunrise.  
  
Still, bickering is not the worst fate imaginable for them, and they have the luxury of argument thanks to the Herald. Her lips are still tinged blue and a shiver overtakes her occasionally, but she only shows signs of improvement. Mother Giselle places a hand on her forehead, nodding to herself when she finds it warmer than before. Patience, ever a virtue, is their only task now.  
  
The Commander waves a hand dismissively at the Ambassador, which only seems to enrage her more. She takes a step towards him, anger ebbing off of her small form, but it is just as much bluster as it is truth. Yes, they are tired and afraid, but more so are they wracked with a poignant guilt. Just as Mother Giselle thinks it, Ambassador Montilyet’s eyes dart towards their tent again, glancing at the Herald’s slumbering form. The Commander’s gaze is quick to follow.

There is a beat of ashamed silence, the two stepping away from each other. The Commander’s hand cups the back of his neck. The Ambassador picks at her nails.  
  
“Our soldiers remain our men even when inconvenient. They _pledged themselves_ to our cause,” Leliana says.  
  
“This is _not_ what we asked of them!” The Commander again throws his arms up exasperatedly.

The argument picks up as though it never stopped.  
  
It continues like that for another hour before the Warden returns with two bowls of stew, handing one to Mother Giselle and leaving the other on a stool next to the cot.  
  
“For when she wakes,” he explains.  
  
Mother Giselle thanks him with a smile. It is good to see small semblances of faith in such trying times. She checks the Herald’s breathing again as he walks away, no doubt to resume appeasing the young elf.  
  
Steady.  
  
_To you, My second-born, I grant this gift:  
In your heart shall burn  
An unquenchable flame,  
All-consuming, and never satisfied._

* * *

Why does anyone live in Ferelden? What _is_ the appeal? Is it the bone-chilling wind? Or maybe the charm of constantly worrying about packs of wolves hiding about in the underbrush?  
  
Dorian fled from the fireside for his own sanity, the raised voices getting more and more grating by the minute, but he’s starting to regret it from Roderick’s side. The cold is worse next to his chest-heaving coughs and the way his eyes flutter, like every moment is to be his last.

Not that Dorian plans on leaving him, however. No, he plants himself by the man’s side and sends a pulse of healing magic every minute or so to numb the pain, and tries to make sense of the mumbled words streaming from his lips. He saved their lives; he deserves to have his last words remembered.  
  
Emery still lies unconscious a tent away. She looked so small in the Commander’s arms. Fragile, like the next gust of wind would scatter her off into the blizzard and across the snow.

The wind picks up, biting at his nose. He pulls his collar further up his neck and tries not to think about how she wandered in this cold, unprotected, for days. He tries not to think of the enormity of what she was willing to do. He owes her a great deal of thanks if she wakes up.

 _When_ she wakes up.

It was a stupidly brave thing to do, a bravely stupid one that he’ll only forgive her for when her eyes open again. She simply requires rest; Solas was clear that there was nothing more to be done for her now besides waiting patiently and swathing her in whatever blankets they could spare (including Dorian’s own). They’re useless.  
  
He detests feeling useless.

Roderick whispers without end and grows fainter by the minute, the bluish veins of his forehead more and more pronounced under paling skin. Dorian puts two fingers to his wrist and watches the pulse of blue magic travel up his arms, quieting him, and it's in that focus that he does not see Emery wade out of her tent and stand before the fire, crossing her arms over her chest. He only hears the hum spread across the grounds, and looks up to see her just as bewildered as he feels, surrounded by an impromptu campfire singalong.

Only, it isn’t another dreadful rendition of Andraste’s Mabari; Sera has already treated him to that affront to modern music numerous times over the past few weeks. It builds slowly, timid voices growing in number and volume, unified and hopeful and _ineffably_ inspiring. It swells and floats along the wind.

The Spymaster is singing.

_The Commander is singing._

Roderick’s arm shoots up, the man’s last strength in his fingers pressing desperately into his forearm, bringing Dorian close.  
  
“ _And though we are few against the wind, we are yours_ ,” he recites. His hand falls.

The Inquisition takes a knee before the Herald, right arms bent over their chests in salute. They erupt into cheers as Dorian closes the man’s eyes with a prayer of his own.

* * *

He calls her away from the festivities with great reluctance and as much discretion as can be managed, guiding her with a hand on the small of her back. Emery swats it away once it becomes clear he is preparing to catch her rather than simply ushering her forward, but he relents without argument. If she wishes his help, she will ask.  
  
Solas slows to match her limping pace, but it is the only courtesy he offers, and for that she is grateful.  
  
The torch alights with a flick of his wrist, its blue glow casting shadows over the planes of her cheeks. She is gaunt with days of starvation, her complexion sickly from chill and malnutrition, but she is still very much alive, no thanks to his efforts.

He cannot fail her again.

She is more perceptive than she gives herself credit for; she has already sensed that his news is dire, whatever fleeting hope Mother Giselle had inspired gone and her eyes worryingly hollow once more. She bounces on her heels as he speaks, but stills as he goes on.

As he identifies the orb as Elven, she lets out a sigh that seems to take all of her stamina with it. He stops mid-sentence at her deflation, watching her drag a bandaged hand over her face and rubbing at her eyes.  
  
“People will use it as another reason to mistreat the Elves,” she says by way of explanation. It is spoken with such a certainty that he wonders what hardships she has witnessed against his people, but it is a question for another time. “Nothing’s ever easy, is it?”  
  
“It would seem not,” he agrees.  
  
The revelry booms in the distance. He can make out Sera and Blackwall singing something in mismatched keys, no doubt another bawdy favourite from Denerim’s less reputable taverns.  
  
“What will we do?” Her voice startles him, and he perhaps mulls over the use of _‘we’_ more than he should before responding.  
  
“ _You_ will be their guide.”

* * *

They have not slowed in two weeks, not in pace nor in mind. Cassandra leaves her alone with the maps again. She tries to trace their route from what she remembers seeing off the cliff face hours before, but it’s a vague recollection. She rolls the maps up with shaky hands.  
  
She is stretching her arms above her head, her fingertips brushing the top of the tent, reaching and reaching and almost there, a pleasant strain in her shoulders. Cole remembers it, the look on her face when the stretch falls into place, the way she doesn’t smile when she thinks no one can see her.  
  
“I can’t hear you,” he says.

She falls off her cot, scrambling on the ground and taking her sheets with her. Her hands grab aimlessly, fingers curling into a layer of snow. She hisses inside, but on the outside she only gasps for breath, a hand over her heart. Her eyes focus on him after a few seconds, and then they calm, and then she flops over. She pulls her knees to her chest, resting her elbows on them. She looks at him through eyelashes. The brim of his hat does not dim her green.  
  
“Cole, right?”  
  
“Yes. People call me Cole. Except Varric,” he amends. “He calls me Kid. I like that.”  
  
She watches him curiously, forming her words carefully.  
  
“You scared me, Cole,” she finally says.  
  
“Yes.”

“Please don’t just – don’t pop up like that without warning,” she sighs, pushing herself to her feet and sitting down again on her cot.  
  
“I’m sorry.”  
  
“It’s,” a hand rakes through her hair, “it’s alright.”  
  
“I’m still sorry.”  
  
She smiles at her toes. “What were you saying?”  
  
Cole appears cross-legged on the other end of the cot, fingers pinching at the fabric of his sleeves.  
  
“I can’t hear you.”  
  
She furrows her brow; she’s confused. He’s not doing this right.  
  
“I can hear everyone, but I can’t hear you. Only sometimes. When you’re very loud.”

She cocks her head, the same way Sera does when she’s listening beneath the wind, _bloody demon –  person – demon shit_. Her smile is warm, like Josephine’s, _soft of heart and footstep, she remembers his voice and the blue of his eyes, the piercing blue, but not the words, only serenity and silence._  
  
“When I’m thinking loudly?”  
  
“When you can’t think quietly,” he corrects. She doesn’t understand the difference, but it’s important. Leliana always thinks quietly, so he leaves berries by her bedroll. Varric is always too loud, _the Seeker’s eyes were filled with danger, duress, determination, the cupid’s bow of her lip pulled thin and shapeless._ He already lets Cole say his thoughts out loud sometimes, to help him get them down on paper. Cole can be helpful.  
  
But Emery, _the child, the Herald,_ the mark burns too hot for him to look at. He can only hear her when it becomes too much. He can’t mend it because he doesn’t know what’s wrong. He can’t make her forget because her brightness won’t let him. He doesn’t know what to do.  
  
“How do we fix it?” She asks, after a long moment of thought. Cullen thinks like that too, _wading, weighed, worrying. Everything is too tight, suffocating, the dragon’s breath too near. The boy doesn’t like Corpypheus. Her lips are blue, he has failed again. Blue, dancing, singing softly, he should be_ taking _it._

“Cole?” Emery whispers.  
  
“I was lost again. I’m back now.”

She pulls at the frayed edges of her blanket; she is uneasy.  
  
“ _Walking, marching, running from the dark and its claws, leading the charge, it shouldn’t be me,_ ” he recites in a rushed breath.  
  
She says nothing, but when he looks up to see her eyes they are wide with fear and pleading and – and –

She’s too quiet again.  
  
“You are stronger than you think,” he says, as simply as if he were stating the weather, as if the world isn’t resting on her shoulders.  
  
She sighs, running a hand through her hair once more. When she looks up again, Cole is gone.

* * *

They’ve been a parade of ants marching through the Frostbacks at a breakneck pace for the better part of three weeks now, and for the past eight days Bull has been tasked with the objective of keeping the Herald off of her feet. Figuratively. It became literal two hours ago when she kept hurrying back to help carry supplies and Red got fed up with it.  
  
Blackwall walks next to them, failing to fight off a smile when he looks up for the fourteenth time in the past two minutes. Varric is on his other side, not bothering to hide his grin as he glances up from the journal he’s been chronicling the day’s events in. Bull can’t blame them. He bets the kid looks pretty ridiculous, riding his shoulders.  
  
Sera had just about passed out from laughing when he hoisted the kid up, watching her feet kick around without purchase and her hands try to tear his off. He held her like that, suspended in the air, for a good ten seconds before she gave up, probably expecting to be put down.  
  
Sera laughed harder when he plopped the kid on his shoulders and she started beating at his chest with her heels. The novelty wore off once all the fight left her, and now she hums, definitely bored out of her skull, but at least resting all the various parts broken bones and aches that need time to heal over.

The sun is high in the sky, blindingly bright when she taps incessantly at his shoulder to be let down. He pushes her hand away without comment, but she’s insistent, tapping again.  
  
He doesn’t react. Not until she grabs one of his horns and yanks, _hard_. It sends him spiraling off balance and she tumbles off of him, running as soon as her feet hit ground. He respects the maneuver despite the pain and Blackwall’s howling laughter, and she calls out a half-hearted _sorry_ as she bounds ahead, grabbing Solas’s wrist as she passes. He lets out an indignant huff of breath but does nothing to slow her scramble forward, even when she drags him up, up, up the cliff face, and then halts. She slouches, and he leans against his staff.  
  
Bull doesn’t see it until he _sees_ it, and he stops dead in his tracks. Just under the cloud cover in the distance, a few leagues off but a half a day’s journey at most. Varric lets out a low whistle.  
  
Skyhold.  
  
Bad _ass._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guess who should've been studying for exams??? Me. It was me. If I write anything else before May 13th, scold me for it. Glad to post this one though, as the Cullen and Josephine parts had been written before I wrote most of the first chapter (though I did go back and tweak Josephine's). Those two, along with the Sera, Dorian, Vivienne and Cole ones were probably my favourites this chapter. And Cole's finally here! How rad is that!
> 
> Also, how do you guys feel about non-main perspectives? As in not Emery or the companions or advisors? I've done Alexius, Anora, Anders, and Mother Giselle thus far I think. Any thoughts?
> 
> As always, hope you liked it!


	5. Skyhold

Emery flinches away from the sunlight as she steps outside, frowning and bringing a hand up to shield her eyes from the incoming light. She hardly looks grand or regal with her nose scrunched just so and her hair disheveled from sleep, strands poking out in all directions from the braids along the side of her head, and it would point most to reconsider the responsibility they plan to bestow upon her.  
  
Not Cassandra though. Perhaps it’s Emery’s tiny noise of distaste in the motion, or the way her posture stands tall beneath it, but Cassandra only feels affirmed in their decision. There is a sincerity in her they would be foolish to overlook and an enthusiasm they would be remiss to ignore.  
  
Cassandra is the first to see her, the advisors’ gaze following her own. A soft smile graces Josie’s delicate features, a subtler sentiment mirrored in Cullen and Leliana. Emery catches their eye and rapidly transitions from pleasantly surprised to vaguely suspicious, eyes widening then narrowing. Leliana has residual concerns over such transparency, but Cassandra cannot help the relief she feels at having someone whose emotions are so easily legible on her person. Cassandra waves her over.  
  
She approaches with sleep-laden steps, lethargic but not unobservant as she dodges around the various troops hauling in supplies. No one recognizes her properly with her appearance so unguarded, out of her armor and clad in mute colours.     
  
The others disperse, Cullen off to gather the troops and Josephine and Leliana no doubt to buff the sword once more for ceremony’s sake. Emery’s attention lingers on the men and women hurrying past with boxes in their arms.  
  
“They arrive daily from every settlement in the region,” Cassandra says. “Skyhold is becoming something of a pilgrimage.”  
  
Emery’s eyes widen at the implication. She follows Cassandra without prompting, up the staircase and through the yard. Her gaze wanders as they walk, listening and nodding but nevertheless swept up in the adventure and romance of their new fortress.  
  
When Cassandra mentions Corypheus, she only shrugs, saying, “he came to take back the Anchor and decided to kill me once it was irretrievable.”  
  
“The anchor has power,” Cassandra begins, “but it is not why you stand before us still. Your decisions gave us the power necessary to seal the Breach, and it was your sacrifice that saved us at Haven. You are not the creature’s rival for the mark alone, but because of your character, your determination. We know that to be true. All of us.”

Emery’s eyebrows pinch together at that, her head tilting as though she means to argue but decides against it. Uncomfortable with praise as ever. “This is all very flattering, but what are you…”

She trails off as she ascends the final steps, Leliana coming into view. She holds the blade with the hilt extended towards Emery, the barest hint of a smile on her unreadable features.  
  
“The Inquisition requires a leader,” Cassandra explains. “The one who has _already_ been leading it.”  
  
Emery now notices the masses that have gathered at her feet, their merchants and soldiers, her companions and trusted advisors. They watch her with no small measure of excitement, and Cassandra can barely conceal her own. They are witnessing – _orchestrating_ history on this day.  
  
“And you – you all agreed to this? You all had that much confidence in me?”  
  
“There would be no Inquisition to stand here without you. How we will serve Thedas under your guide will be yours to decide.”  
  
Her grip is tentative as her fingers wrap around the sword’s hilt, lifting it from Leliana’s hands with a near reverence. Cassandra supposes that is to be expected – the power at her fingertips is nigh unfathomable, and she has been forced into the role of leader numerous times over the past month after a lifetime of following order and routine. It is equal parts vast authority and crippling responsibility, but moreover she is about to become the head of something far larger than herself, than all of them.  
  
“We’ll do what’s right,” she whispers, then turns to the people, her people, and projects her voice to the crowd. “The Inquisition will fight for all of us.”  
  
“Have the people been told?” Cassandra calls.

“They have!” Josephine steps forward, an exuberant glint shining in her eyes. “And soon, the world!”  
  
“Commander, will they follow?”  
  
Cullen turns and poses the crowd the same question, met with uproarious enthusiasm, and he turns to them with the same gleam in his eye, their triumph a real possibility in this singular moment.  
  
There is a second, a fraction of a second where Emery hesitates, where her brows knit and her lips pinch and her arm trembles.  
  
What is Cassandra allowing to happen on this day? She is bestowing both a wondrous gift and a great burden. She is placing the fate of all of Thedas in the hands of a girl barely out of adolescence, a child who stays up at night to gaze at the stars and dream of flights of fancy. She is choosing not the Hero of Ferelden or the Champion of Kirkwall, but the timid Herald of Andraste, a woman just beginning to come into her own. She is falling victim to absurd notions of heroism and courage.  
  
But Cassandra is also promoting a girl who forgoes sleep to aid the huddled masses of refugees. She is prioritizing mercy over efficiency through a warrior who never attacks first, who will never begin a fight but will just as surely end one. She is empowering virtuosity and bravery in the face of fear.  
  
She is doing what she believes is right.  
  
 As a smile settles on Cassandra’s face, the tension smooths from Emery’s form, her grip growing certain and her back straightening.  
  
“Oh, the Maker has a cruel sense of humour,” she laughs.  
  
The newly christened Inquisitor lifts her head with a disbelieving grin and thrusts her sword into the air, the cheering that erupts deafeningly passionate.  
  
“For the Inquisition!” She yells.  
  
“For the Inquisition!”

* * *

 “Maker, you’re a mess!”  
  
Vivienne’s voice carries over the rabble of the courtyard with startling clarity, stopping Emery in her tracks. The Enchanter is in front of her in three graceful strides, a patronizing concern colouring her ordinarily collected features. Emery smooths her hair and the front of her tunic, but Vivienne only clucks her tongue and brushes her hands away.  
  
“Are you all right, my dear? I trust you’ve recovered well, or you wouldn’t be frolicking about the facilities unguarded.”  
  
Her compassion, however aggressive and stilted, is wholly uncharted territory, the most Vivienne has ever granted her being throaty chuckles rife with condescension, unsolicited advice, and the rare indulgence of curiosities into Orlesian quotidian. She had snorted indelicately at Emery’s suggestion to incorporate the mages into the Chantry. She had been downright appalled by her alliance with the mages of Redcliffe.  
  
Emery had been certain Vivienne tolerated her at best, keeping her alive as was her duty, only engaging in conversation to pass the time.

Perhaps she had misjudged their relationship.  
  
“I’m sure I’ve looked worse.”  
  
Vivienne’s lips curve into a viper’s smile. “I have no doubt.” She gives a cursory glance to the horrendous beige of the Inquisitor’s civilian clothing, nose turning upwards in disgust. It is a matter for another time. “But there are more imminent matters. Leaving ourselves vulnerable to attack was a grave miscalculation, one you should take care not to repeat given your new leadership. Congratulations, by the way, Inquisitor.” She does not allow Emery time to respond before continuing. “Our enemy advances and we cannot afford to sit idly by. You will do well to remember this in the decisions ahead – inaction and complacency has lost us lives.”

Her speech sounds suspiciously pre-prepared, but it could very well be her natural composure lending itself well to lecturing. The uncertainty in her pause is all the more prominent by comparison.  
  
“That is not to say that you did not perform admirably, saving as many as you did,” she continues, a solemnity to her tone. The sun’s rays highlight the smudges in her carefully applied make-up and the lines of age around her eyes. They are but slight cracks in her characteristic equanimity, yet they speak to a greater emotional upheaval than a spectator would estimate. Her frown turns stern. “You should nevertheless endeavour to do better. Act first, and teach them to fear our assault rather than our retaliation. You can become the leader the faithful require, my dear, but you must adopt the necessary affectation and ideology, and soon.”

Emery blinks. Vivienne finds her loss for words oddly charming, and even more so is her attempt to mimic her elder’s fortitude with far less intimidating results. “I will not allow Corypheus the likes of what he has done again. Not if I can stop it.”  
  
“Confidence, darling. Not _if_ you can stop him. You will, and I will provide every aid to ensure it.” Vivienne brushes dust off of her shoulder, meeting Emery’s eyes with a dismissive nod. “Off you go now. I’ve taken up enough of your precious time.”

* * *

 “Look at you, _Quizzie_ ,” Sera grins, laughing as Emery bats her hands away from pinching at her cheeks.  
  
“Oh, please, please don’t call me that. That’s worse than Inquisitor.”  
  
Sera looks her up and down, cocks her head and then nods to herself in faux thought. “Mmmm, nah. Quizzie it is. Suits you.”

“Sera, don’t – “

Sera cups her hands around her mouth, shouting out into the courtyard, “all hail the mighty Inquisitor, Herald of Andraste, vanquisher of the great and powerful Coryphe-shit! Tremble in her path, puny mortals!” She imitates the sound of a cheering crowd before resting her hands on her hips, smirking.

Emery rubs at her eyes, ducking her head away from the stray travelers caught up in the commotion, the lot of them ogling Sera like she’s got three heads. “Fine,” she pouts, not looking like much of a leader at all.

Sera punches her shoulder. “Knew you’d come around.”

* * *

She walks across the grass with heavy steps, but the grass doesn’t mind. It’s content to grow and green and one day grey, wither to dust, begin anew. It can handle small girls in big boots.

“Hello, Cole,” the Inquisitor – _a title, not a name, what she is but not who she is –_ greets, crouching on the ground next to him. “Do you have a minute?”

“I do. He doesn’t.” He points to the wounded man and her eyes follow, obedient, open, lingering on the Inquisition eye etched into his chest plate. “ _Choking fear, can’t think from the medicine but the gashes wrack me with every heartbeat.”_

The Inquisitor sucks in a breath, rising, walking – _marching, she moves with purpose and pity, her lips turn down but her stomach plummets and no one can see, can only guess –_  kneeling by the man’s side. Cole can almost hear her, _my fault, my burden,_ but the man is much louder, and he jumbles into a blur when she takes his hand in both of her own. His eyes are closed, but he sees in clarity.

“ _Sweet girl. Brave, but she couldn’t save everyone, not me. Hot white pain, everything burns. I can’t, I can’t. I’m going to… I’m dying… I’m – “_

His hand goes limp in the Inquisitor’s grasp. She lays it across his chest, fingers draped over his still heart. He wanted to serve, to protect. _There are worse things to die for._  
  
“ _Dead,”_ Cole finishes.  
  
“Cole,” she says, surprised. He had appeared next to her. He stands by her shoulder; she rises again, with purpose and pity, but this time for him. Her forehead is at his chin, and she tilts her head up to look into his eyes. “Is this overwhelming you?”  
  
“There are so many of them. So many hurts.”

“Do you want to go somewhere else?”

“Yes.” He shakes his head. “But I can help here.”

She does not make it to the next recruit’s side before Cole announces his death, and Cole hears the tinkling of bells, the air thinning so her thoughts have room to breathe, _senseless, somber, the drizzling rain over rusted armor, a promise of something more never to come._

“You want to help?”  
  
“Yes.” Cole gives the woman water and then he is forgotten, reappearing at the Inquisitor’s side. Only she can see him. He needs her to remember. “I thought I was a ghost, but I was wrong. My friends showed me how to be, until I lost them. Now I am what I am. Stronger. I can hear more, I can heal more hurts.”  
  
“Stay and help, then, Cole. Maker knows I can’t afford to be picky.”

Her smile fades at the knife in his hands, and her hand is wrapped around his wrist, pulling him away, away from the others and toward herself. The Inquisitor stills his mercy. 

_Someone make it stop hurting, Maker,_ please _, end it, end it._

“He will not survive.” Cole blinks at her, her eyes wide but the set of her shoulders calm. She lets his wrist fall away.  
  
“Give him the chance,” she says, hopes, begs.

“He suffers if you are wrong.”

She closes her eyes, breathes with her whole body, her shoulders rising and chest expanding and head hung low. “I know. But let him try.”

“Try,” Cole repeats to the man. His lips are chapped and his green eyes are ringed with red. It is agony to breathe. “Try.”

_It hurts, it burns, but he will. He does._

He lives.

* * *

It has been millennia since he last experienced the Fade in such vibrancy, the colours richer than memory and the caress of the wind on his cheek as it weaves through the pine needles as vivid as the waking world, perhaps even more so, sensation heightened by the raw and untapped power of the anchor.

Haven is before them, untouched by devastation. It is fitting that they speak here, a common ground between them with a significance that extends beyond words, a place of lost life and childhood.

Emery follows him wordlessly through the courtyard. The grand doors swing open without being touched, and he guides her into the dungeons below, the low light of the candles flickering over her. She frowns.

“Why are we here?”

For a flash, she sits cross-legged on the floor, beaten and beleaguered, struggling to breathe as shadowy figures loom over her, a thrum of voices blurring together. It is gone in the blink of an eye.

“Discovery,” Solas answers, the crypticity not escaping him. He stares at the blood-stained cot in the cell ahead, _her_ cell, where he spent days mending her broken bones and disfigured flesh. “What do you remember before you awoke?”

“Nothing,” she says, brow furrowing.

“Then I shall recount it for you. You entered my care half-alive, and it was my duty to heal you. Whatever your supposed crimes, it was essential that you be restored to proper health, if only to face justice. It speaks to their desperation that an elven mage was assigned such a task.

“Four days I sat beside you while you slept, monitoring your condition and studying the anchor. I ran every test I could fathom to determine the mark’s origin and purpose, searched the Fade extensively, and found nothing. You remained an enigma. Cassandra suspected duplicity. She threatened to have me executed as an apostate if I didn’t produce results.”  
  
“I wouldn’t have allowed that,” Emery interjects.

Her unwavering compassion will be her undoing, but for now he rewards it with a smile. “You were in no position to argue.”

They ascend the stairs side by side, coming up into an unfamiliar foyer of stone walls lit with overhanging chandeliers, the Templar crest ahead of them. Again, he blinks, and it is replaced with the reddish wood and furnishings of Haven’s Chantry. The subconscious connections she forms, even with his own mind channelling the energy to a single point, are powerful enough in of themselves to superimpose that which he has envisioned.

It happens once more as Solas pushes open the Chantry doors, a boundless meadow flitting in and out of existence before settling on Haven’s snowy grounds.

“What happened next?” Emery prompts.

“You were never going to wake.” She recoils at the statement, or perhaps the finality with which he says it. “How could you, a mortal sent _physically_ through the Fade?” He takes her hand, his thumb pressing into the center of her palm. “I was frustrated, frightened. The Breach’s influence was vast, and had driven away any spirits I might have consulted. No ordinary magic nor effort of my own could affect the rifts.”  
  
“You were going to leave,” she states, not accusatory, but mingled with upset just the same. He does not meet her prying gaze for fear of the hurt that lingers there, for the flecks of green in her eyes – further enduring evidence of his misdoings.

“Yes.” He lets her hand fall away. The Breach crackles into the sky above, Solas craning his neck to watch it twist and flare, its glow washing over them as the flow of the incoming tide rushes over the shore.  
  
“Why didn’t you?”

“You awoke.”

The image of her debilitated on the dungeon floor flashes again, then the first rift closed, his hand wrapped around her wrist as she flinched and thrashed.

“The mark had seemed the key to our salvation.” The Breach sparks overhead before closing, and Solas watches her turn her wrist, pulling at the hem of her glove. “You sealed the rift with a simple gesture, and with it, the whole world had changed.”

“I awoke, and this was the basis of your staying?” She shrugs a shoulder, flexing her hand. “It can’t have been that impressive.”

“But it was! You should not have survived, and yet you did. You should not have awoken, and yet you did. You have fractured the rules of man and nature, Inquisitor. You do so as we speak.”

Her embarrassment at such fervent praise quickly gives way to confusion. “What do you mean?”  
  
“To converse with me here, and you not even a mage,” he trails off, watching closely for the realization to cross her face, the slow widening of her eyes and the awed parting of her lips.

“The Fade!” Emery’s eyes dart around them, taking in the rustling trees and the ground beneath their feet. “We’re in the Fade?”

“Indeed.”

“That’s – how? It’s never been so _real_ before.”  

“Perhaps a matter we should discuss later.” He lets his efforts dissipate, the anchor’s magic swelling and bursting as their surroundings warp into ten, twenty, a hundred different scenes in the span of seconds, her mind whirring to comprehend the infinite creative power bestowed upon it. Haven becomes a meadow in springtime, a waterfall deep in the forest, the nook in between shelves at a library, the night sky itself. They stand encapsulated in starlight, the very heavens open to their whim. She gasps.

“Inquisitor?”

She dips her hand into a constellation, pulses of light scooped into her palm. Her breath leaves her in a disbelieving laugh.

“Yes?”

 _“Wake up.”_  

* * *

It is in the wee hours of the morning that Leliana closes the envelope of her final letter, the arrival at Skyhold a mess of encrypted and decrypted envoys to be sent throughout her ever expanding network. If she had not met Brother Genitivi in person, she would gladly burn her copy of _Travels of a Chantry Scholar_ at the week’s turnover, throwing the book into the fire at the precise moment the codebook changed.

The spiral staircase gives way to an empty library, the lanterns blown out for the night and only the thin beams of moonlight, shining through stained glass windows and dispersed into an array of colours, giving shape to the tattered books and stone walls. She walks in practiced silence round the bannister, peering over to confirm that Solas has retired for the night, disappearing off to the garden for rest as per Scout Winters report. His exploration of history both famous and ordinary through the Fade remains a mystery to her, one Leliana will question further when she is granted the time.

She has come to learn that The Maker does not allow His servants rest. Not when there is work left to be done.

A gentle snore sounds to her right, and Leliana rounds the final bookcase to find Dorian asleep in his chair, a leather-bound book resting precariously on his outstretched arm. At his feet lay the Inquisitor, head face down on a pile of tomes and hair shrouding her face from the dim vestiges of light. She snores again, the curtain of hair fluttering with her breath.

It is a precious sight, one Leliana wishes to capture indefinitely, but even the most life-like portrait could not depict the inimitable essence of the Inquisitor sprawled on the library floor, vulnerable and untempered by the grander machinations of the universe, encompassed in the eerie aura unique to the hours bordering dawn. She sits untouched by circumstance, inevitably to re-enter the world and its dilemmas with the indomitable passage of time, but not just yet.

Dorian stirs, blinks as his eyes adjust to the light or lack thereof, and then his arm is raised, a writhing ball of flame poised and ready to scorch the freckles off of Leliana’s nose. His book falls to the floor, forgotten.

“Venhedis, woman!” He hisses, voice still beset by the haze of sleep. “What could have possessed you to lurk in the shadows like that?” The flame flickers once, twice before disappearing, the darkness returning in disarming entirety. He snaps his fingers, a smaller surge of flame dancing from his fingertips.

“I would not have thought you so easily unnerved, Master Pavus.”

He straightens, free hand pinching the bridge of his nose.

“I assure you I am normally the pinnacle of composure. I was simply,” he smooths the lines of his moustache, dragging a hand over his chin, “rudely awakened.”

“I made no sound,” Leliana says.

“No,” Dorian concedes, nodding his head, “but this one did.” He seems conflicted as he gazes at the Inquisitor’s form, perhaps torn between disgust at her sleeping conditions and affection at the farce of it all. “She was adamant that we stay until we found what we were looking for. Not the smartest course of action in hindsight.”

Leliana smiles, half at the Inquisitor’s stubbornness and half at Dorian’s begrudging fondness. “And what, pray tell, were you looking to find?”  
  
The sleep clears from Dorian’s eyes as his head snaps up, meeting Leliana’s gaze only briefly before darting around the room.

“The book. Red leather, golden lettering,” he mutters. “Have you – ”

“At your feet,” she says, nodding towards it.

“Ah, thank you.” He leans forward, careful not to disturb the Inquisitor as he retrieves it. “ _Tales of the Destruction of Thedas._ The First Blight: Chapter 1.” He pauses for effect, raising his eyebrows in mock horror. “ _The second sin._ ”

“A Brother Genitivi work,” Leliana notes.

Dorian smiles. “Indeed. The most objective history involving Tevinter I could find in this propaganda ridden jumble.” He leafs through it, running his finger down the spine as he skims the text on a few pages before stopping, releasing a hum of satisfaction. He speaks quickly as he sifts for information. “ _The magisters dared to open a magical portal into the Golden City at the heart of the Fade. They sought to usurp the Maker’s throne, long left unattended in the Golden City after the Maker turned His back on His creations._ ”

He scoffs, leaning back in his chair and snapping the book shut.

“Blah, blah, blah, storming heaven, becoming gods, unforgivable sin. Nothing of import.” His gaze strays to the Inquisitor again, still sleeping soundly against his legs. “Pity. She was almost unbearably darling earlier, begging that we learn more about the ancient Magisterium.”

Leliana makes a mental note of gathering information on the subject atop her other duties. “Shall I leave you two to your rest?”

“No,” he sighs. “It’s time that both of us retired to bed.” He shakes his leg, jostling the Inquisitor off her stack of books. “Up you! Leader of a heretic cult, and here you are drooling on memoirs like an overgrown toddler.”

Leliana continues her descent down the spiral stairs, muffling a laugh as the Inquisitor groans, muttering something unintelligible before collapsing onto the carpet beneath her, exhausted and intent to stay.

* * *

She’s tiny. Elf tiny. Only a handful of inches taller than Varric tiny. There are scars across her cheeks and her jaw, another over her forehead, all of them horrible to look at, especially since they mar such an earnest, youthful sort of face. No wonder everyone fawns over her so readily.

“I’ve killed dragons,” Hawke says, though she isn’t sure why she feels the need to say it.

“So has she,” Varric points out. He’s got a knowing grin that Hawke is all too well acquainted with, the same one he used to give her when she used to try to out-drink Isabela and beat Aveline at arm-wrestling. And that one time Anders told her the Gallows wall couldn’t possibly be scaled.  
  
Hawke blows her hair out of her face. So what if she’s got a bit of a teensy weensy occasionally all-consuming competitive streak. Sue her.  
  
“Only five,” the Inquisitor says, beaming at Hawke like a kid on Satinalia. Her feet shuffle a bit awkwardly, but damned if she isn’t trying to make a good impression. Hawke melts a little. 

“Five dragons?” She might sound a little too enthusiastic when she says it, maybe laying it on a bit too thick, but with the Inquisitor still looking at her like the sun shines out her ass it doesn’t feel hammy at all.  
  
“Five _high_ dragons,” Varric says.

“You’re fucking with me! Really?”  
  
Varric gives her a pointed warning look, head inclined towards the rather young and now rather bashful Inquisitor.

“I mean, Andraste’s grace! That’s um, that sure is neat Lady Trevelyan.”

Varric pinches the bridge of his nose with an exaggerated sigh, for which Hawke can only offer a sheepish grin.  
  
The next hour is filled with swapped stories, the Inquisitor one-upping each of her tales with something more ridiculous and heroic, albeit unintentionally. Hawke responds with just as much enthusiasm, taking care not to get into the more, ahem, _adult_ aspects of some of her travels, and whenever the Inquisitor just _casually_ _mentions_ that one time she survived an avalanche or went forward in time, Hawke reminds herself that not only was the Gallows wall totally scalable, but that it was also totally possible to scale said wall, dodge patrols, and sneak into Meredith’s office to steal her finest alcohol. _That_ ill-advised adventure certainly has to be more impressive than anything the Inquisitor can throw at her.

* * *

“I’m to… judge people? As in give verdicts?”

“Yes.”

“Oh.” The Inquisitor stares at the throne, the golden eye somehow menacing against the reddish wood that stuck out in all directions, like a halo of thorns above its patron. “Are you insane?”

Josephine splutters a bit, startled from perusing the notes on her board. Wax drips down the page and ruins one of many trading ledgers, and she masterfully hides her displeasure at the thought of penning it out again.

“Several sovereign powers have elected to defer to your judgement over –”  
  
“Josephine,” the Inquisitor interrupts. “I don’t know anything about the laws of Ferelden! I mean, I know how the Templars deal with apostates, but that’s the fullest extent of it. I can’t just start making up sentences that _feel_ appropriate to the crime at hand.”  
  
“Ah, well,” Josephine is very rarely unsure of how to respond to an inquiry. It is not at all a feeling she welcomes. “That is more or less what is required from you, however unprepared you may feel. Remember that this needn’t be bloody,” Josephine assures.  
  
The Inquisitor seems to take a moment, eying up the throne before turning to the hall at large. Under its high ceilings stand the ever-present nobility, clamouring for the newest gossip and fancying themselves courtiers to an upcoming sovereign state, or perhaps something more dashing, like the loyal compatriots of a group of swashbuckling rogues. Madame de Fer lies across her seat overlooking them, a book in hand as the sunlight filters in from the balcony behind her. The Inquisition’s emblems hang from the ceilings, flapping just the smallest bit at the current of wind drifting through.

Josephine smiles to herself, remembering the way the Inquisitor was forced to evaluate all the various options for decoration around Skyhold, and after deciding the banners to be displayed and the design of the stained-glass windows, she had all but thrown her hands up in the air when they reached the choices of tapestry in the main hall. _Just make all of it Inquisition-themed_ , she had said. _Big daunting eyes everywhere. That’s got to put the fear of Andraste into anyone visiting._  
  
“We have a dungeon,” she states, returning Josephine to the present.  
  
“Yes.” Dungeon was a rather generous term with all the construction and renovations still taking place, but there were at the very least cells with bars, which would no doubt suffice for the time being.  
  
“And, theoretically, I could just throw people into said dungeon, even for a severe crime, right? I’d prefer it to anything more,” her lips turn down at the corners, “ _violent_ in nature.”  
  
Josephine again smiles, both in agreement and in a twisted sort of amusement at the Inquisitor’s naiveté. “Justice has many tools, my lady. If their application is clever, execution may even seem merciful by comparison.”  
  
The Inquisitor’s frown deepens, a pensive look, but at the same time a disapproving one. Josephine supposes the Inquisitor possessing a firm judiciary stance, even if for now a narrow one, is better than nothing at all.  
  
“Now?” She still looks out at the noble masses, their numbers seeming to have increased at the prospect of something eventful, perverse in a manner akin to vultures swarming a moribund animal.  
  
“Take the throne when you’re ready,” Josephine says.  
  
“Then,” the Inquisitor turns back to her, left fist clenched in a manner Josephine has begun to associate with a range of negative emotions, this time anxiety. “Perhaps later?”  
  
“Of course,” she acquiesces, marking down the unfinished task on her parchment.

* * *

Cullen had only wandered into the dungeons for a brief inspection, a quick onceover to determine the extent of the damages and its relative importance in the growing list of renovations and repairs awaiting the ancient castle. The rush of the waterfall was a momentary distraction.

The Inquisitor, perched on the edge of the rubble and legs dangling over the edge, is a more trying one.  
  
“Maker!” He barrels towards her before thinking better of any sudden movements, deciding that shouting from a distance, once he stops spluttering and finds his voice, will have to suffice. “Get back from there!”

His pleas are almost lost beneath the roar of cascading water, but not quite. The Inquisitor swivels around to find the noise’s source, and just as her face alights with recognition, it morphs to terror. In the split-second that it takes, Cullen is struck by the thought of how pathetic it is, that this is how the Inquisitor will die – plunging off some loose rocks into the abyss, while her commander flaps about ineffectually from the entry way. The shift of weight in turning sends her sliding off the damp stone, and as her head disappears beyond Cullen’s plane of sight, her hand darts up, fingers curling into a grip in the damaged battlements.

“Inquisitor!” Cullen is knelt on the ledge before the thought even materializes in his mind, leaning over and reaching for her forearm. He fixates on the task – the very simple and nonthreatening task of grabbing the Inquisitor – rather than the drop to certain death.

She flails, mouth shaping words he cannot hear, and then her free hand grasps his arm, the other digging deeper into the crevice. It is the most natural thing in the world, to lean away from the edge and pull her with him. Her knees are upon solid ground as he collapses onto his back, weary not from physical strain but the dizzying blur of adrenaline. His heart races in his chest.

The Inquisitor flops next to him with a distinct lack of grace before scrambling to the adjacent wall, back flush against it. Cullen does the same, their breathing levelling into synchronized gasps for air.

“Were you – were you reciting the Chant?” He asks, once the ability to form coherent thought returns to him.  
  
“ _Transfigurations_ ,” she specifies. “Chapter 12.”

“You were comparing the siege of Minrathous to you plummeting into a waterfall?”

“I’d say my predicament was even more immediately threatening than Andraste’s, to be honest.” Her head snaps towards him. “Maker, that was sacrilegious, I didn’t mean – ”

“I’m sure the Maker will forgive it,” he says, rolling his shoulders. “Considering the circumstances.” He spares her a fleeting glance, eyes sweeping over her form in swift examination for injury. All clear. “What were you doing out here in the first place?”

She shrugs.

“It’s pretty. Good a place as any to take a break.” She inclines her head in consideration. “Or it would have been, if not for the whole falling to my death bit.”

They lapse into silence, leant against the battlements with their legs stretched out in front of them, hands blindly fumbling about their persons as though to check if each limb and appendage is still present, attached and fully-functioning. The water continues to flow as it always has, indifferent to the near-death scenario it just facilitated. The Inquisitor hiccups.

“We should get this fixed,” she says.

Cullen cannot help it. He laughs.

* * *

It’s either too late at night or too early in the morning when the Inquisitor walks into the Herald’s rest with bloodshot eyes, sliding into a corner booth and singing softly along with Maryden. Her finger traces the rim of her flagon, filled with alcohol she should not be served, but she doesn’t drink it. She stares at the crevices in the wood, exhausted in more ways than Bull can count.  
  
It's when she’s absent enough for her words to melt into a gentle hum that Bull sits down across from her, clinking her mug of ale with his own. She jumps at the intrusion, eyes going to trace the length of his horns.

“What’s the matter, Boss?”

“No offense, Bull,” she sighs, leaning back on the bench, “but I don’t think you’d relate.”

From anyone else it would be just a polite refusal of conversation, but it’s also the most assertive statement he’s heard her make. Which, know that he thinks about it, is more than a little depressing, since a human teenager should probably be breaking curfew, rebelling, and brooding as a daily pasttime.

Her comfort is more important this curiosity though.

“Want me to leave you to your drink?” Bull asks.

The Inquisitor shrugs. To Bull, everyone is small, but she is exceptionally tiny in this second, tucking an errant strand of hair behind her ear and shielding herself with her arms, winding their way around her chest.

He nods, hands pressing against his thighs as he moves to stand, but her hand darts out to stop him.

“Drink with me?”

Bull nods again, settling back down before grabbing her flagon by the handle. “How about I drink this, and you order yourself something that won’t get you vomiting tomorrow morning?”  
  
The kid frowns. “I’ve had alcohol before.”

“Sure, but have you had to sit through war council meetings hungover before?”

He downs her drink in two gulps, laughing heartily as she stomps over to the bar with a glower and orders herself some warm cider. Smart kid.

* * *

He sizes up the wooden block in front of him with an astute eye, estimating the dimensions and trying to determine what best to make out of it.  
  
Blackwall’s first thought is a new clipboard for Lady Josephine, but the sturdy block would have to be whittled down to a sliver of its width for it, not to mention the way Sera’s been humming ‘mood music’ every time she sees the two of them so much as make eye contact. So, yeah, that’s out.  
  
Maybe a footstool for the Inquisitor? She is rather short, and in the few moments she’s actually sat in her throne, she’s had to perch close to edge of her seat to get her feet flat on the floor. A footstool could have her lounge more, look less like an overeager school child and more the intimidating figure her status signifies.  
  
But then he’d have to explain his reasoning, and she probably wouldn’t take too kindly to being told she’s too short for her throne. Not to mention she’d end up with her feet stretched out in front of her, loafing about like some pampered Orlesian cat. Not a footstool either then.  
  
He twirls the hammer in his hand absent-mindedly, stroking his beard with his free hand, and after a few minutes of thought comes to a satisfying decision.  
  
He grabs a pick, sets it about where he wants to first split the wood, and just as he brings down his hammer hears, of all things, a giggle.  
  
It startles him, the hammer missing the pick and slamming the wood, nearly crippling his fingers. He curses in surprise, the giggles silencing before breaking out louder than before. Blackwall drops his tools in annoyance, and as he looks up to the noise, a muffin hits him.  
  
Right between the eyes.  
  
It takes a little while for the confusion to dissipate, but when he comes back to his senses he finds Sera and Emery sit cross-legged on the loft above, a basket between them. Emery looks like she’s about to suffer the Maker’s wrath while Sera snickers into her sleeve, trying to start a sentence and then dissolving back into laughter again.  
  
When she finally manages to quiet herself, the elf grabs a piece of bread and stuffs it into her mouth, face still flushed with joy.  
  
“Oo unha oin uh oh uh?” She says.  
  
Blackwall blinks. “Beg your pardon?”  
  
Sera huffs and attempts to speak again around her mouthful of bread while Emery translates, “are you going to join us or what?”

Blackwall fixes them with a hard stare just long enough to make them squirm before he bursts out laughing, continuing to do so as he clambers up the ladder up to the loft and plops down next to them. They move to give him space, their legs dangling off the loft while he takes a pastry out of the basket. It’s flaky and covered in sugar, made with some sort of fruit.  
  
“Where’d you manage to get these?” He asks, taking a bite. Strawberry filling. Or is it cherry?  
  
“Stole ‘em from the kitchens,” Sera answers, having finally swallowed the bread. “This one’s not bad at sneaking about when she’s out of that clunky armor.” She smiles fondly, giving Emery a playful hit on the shoulder.  
  
“That’s less skill and more me just being small and inconspicuous,” Emery says.  
  
“Nah, you’re a natural,” Sera assures. “Couple more runs like this and you won’t need me distracting the cooks anymore.”  
  
“I would think you’d be the one distracting while _she_ steals the goods,” Blackwall says to Emery.  
  
“Oh, she can’t tell a lie to save her skin,” Sera grins. “But we can work on that too.”  
  
“Sera.” Emery’s lips are pursed, her brow pulled tight in thought. “I think you might be a bad influence on me.”  
  
Sera falls backwards in mock offense, a hand over her heart and half a cookie hanging out of her mouth. “You take that back!”  
  
“We’re stealing from the kitchens!”  
  
Sera waves a hand noncommittally. “It all belongs to you anyway, _Quizzie!_ ”  
  
They bicker for another minute while Blackwall watches, munching on his pastry. Emery starts complaining about what a terrible nickname that is, but Sera stays focused on their ventures as a thieving duo.  
  
Blackwall’s picking sugar out of his beard when Emery crashes into him, knocking him sideways as she dodges the half-eaten cookie Sera lobs at her.  
  
“Sera, we have to use our powers for good!” Emery laughs, catching the second cookie Sera tosses at her.

Sera catches his eye for a split second, communicating things Blackwall already knows or is smart enough to figure out himself. She didn’t mean for him to end up as collateral damage in their impromptu pastry battle, and she’s not making a big show for her benefit alone.

Emery is laughing breathlessly, fully aware of how silly she’s being and how unacceptable mucking around like this is considered in any context. First raised in nobility, then under the strict watch of the Templars, and now head of a powerful multinational organization, she’s probably never had the occasion to be so excitable. Sera’s making up for lost time in some ways.

Another muffin hits him in the jaw, the elf paying it no mind as she reaches into the basket again for more ammunition. Alright, part of it’s for Emery’s lost childhood and the like, but the rest of it is because Sera’s incorrigible and a menace to civilized society. Proudly so.

“What’s that noise up there?” A voice calls from below, and they all freeze. Sera’s arm is raised in the air, winding up for another muffin throw, Emery eyes pop open at the horse master’s voice mid-flinch, and Blackwall is leaning on his elbow, halfway through sitting up.  
  
“Hide!” Sera hisses, grabbing the collar of Emery’s shirt in one hand and the half-filled basket in the other. She throws herself into the hay bales and takes Emery along with her, leaving Blackwall to face Dennett’s inquisitive gaze alone.  
  
“Get down from there, man! All that racket’s riling up the Inquisitor’s mount!”

Blackwall gestures helplessly to the giggling bales of hay behind him, but Dennett has already turned and left to tend to the unsettled mare.  
  
Emery rolls over, spitting out mouthfuls of hay and offering him a decent attempt at an apologetic smile.

“Sera, this is what I mean,” she enunciates, picking another piece of hay off her tongue. “If we keep going on like this, more innocents will get caught in the crossfire.”  
  
He chuckles at that.  
  
“He’s not so innocent, I’ll tell you that,” Sera counters.  
  
_You have no idea,_ his mind supplies. “Both of you, out of the stables so I can get some carving done.”  
  
“Ooh, dolls for you girlfriend?” Sera teases. She stands up without bothering to brush the hay off herself. Emery stands on her own, careful not to forget the basket, though between their clever escape into the hay and the baked goods warfare there’s only a couple of cookies left in it.  
  
“Lady Josephine is not my girlfriend,” Blackwall says, maybe a bit too quickly.  
  
“Never said a name, did I?”  
  
Emery drags Sera and her unbearably smug grin out into the courtyard as a mercy to him, but not before giving him an appraising look. It’s a quick sweep of her eyes over him, nothing but a cursory glance, really, but it’s still more scrutiny than she’s ever given him before. Including when she first recruited him.  
  
Blackwall does not spare too much thought on what she might discover if she looks too closely.  
  
He sets aside a few smaller blocks of wood for dolls, since it isn’t a bad gift now that he’s considering it, and pauses to make certain there’ll be no interruptions before starting on a rocking horse. If the girls are going to steal away the muffins, its only fair that Blackwall give something back to the baker’s daughter in return.

* * *

The mural decorating the walls of the Rotunda appears overnight, and Solas admits to it being his handiwork without fuss, looking almost prideful as Emery twirls on her heel to take it in. It’s her story – their story – she thinks, though he will not confirm nor deny the interpretation.

The colours are bold and contrasting, intense reds and golds and blues given shadow and depth with touches of black, broad strokes with delicate detailing in the depiction of light and motion. Artistry was never her area of expertise, unless one considers swordplay an art. Moving to run her the pads of her fingers over the stone, gracing it with the gentlest of touches so as not to prematurely peel the paint, Emery lets out an awe-struck sigh.

It became a mission of hers to catch him in the act, but she is continually unsuccessful.

The story appears in segments, first his illustration of the Breach with flame and brilliant beams of light cascading from the heavens within their first week at Skyhold.

The second, the calling of the Inquisition symbolized with the howling of a wolf. She initially assumed Cassandra to be the wolf portrayed. Solas had raised his brow at this speculation but then disregarded it, the wolves intended to be more a symbol of like-minded opposition, fierce and deadly, but pack animals at heart.

The third, the mages recruited. A lone figure with a skull-like mask and black robes, adorned with an ivory cape. It stands in the foreground before two warring reflections of Redcliffe castle. It’s all straightforward, save for the golden snakes winding across the cloak. She imagines it’s a subtle way of calling the Tevinters a “slimy, devious lot,” to which Solas only breathes out a laugh and shakes his head.

Regardless, a new facet of his mural seems to pop up each day she is away or duty causes her to forgo a daily visit to his usual haunt, and she has expressed her frustration to Solas himself and the better part of her traveling company. So much so, she seems to have created an urban legend surrounding it.

Vivienne makes her way out onto the balcony above him at a more frequent rate, feigning nonchalance. Dorian looks up from his reading every so often to peer over the rail, letting out a disappointed and somewhat overdramatic sigh before resettling in his chair and his current tale of woe. He can hear Sera skulking around the rafters on occasion, though that’s more likely because she wishes to splash paint on him than to actually see him work.

After a rather taxing discussion with Cullen about the former Templar acting as Corypheus’s second-in-command, her next meeting with Leliana seems all the more exhausting. She trudges up the rotunda’s steps, offering Solas a distracted smile.

A scout interrupts her meeting with Leliana not five minutes later to deliver an urgent missive from Dorian, requesting her presence in the library post-haste. She makes her way down the stairs, ready to mock him for being too lazy to make the ten-second walk up the flight himself, and her mouth is open to do so when he’s immediately in front of her, one hand clapping over her mouth and the other pressing a finger to his lips.

He retracts his hand in response to her narrowed eyes, but his lip quirks at her obedience, her mouth pressed into a line. He waves her over, tip-toeing to the edge of the balcony to lean over the railing. She copies the motion with less grace but just as quietly, a hand closed around the hilt of her sword to keep it steady as she moves.  
  
Her curiosity is sated when she sees Solas, paintbrush in hand (and another tucked into his belt, and a third behind his ear), diligently painting a swatch of dark blue onto the stone. She cannot make out his expression from this angle, but she imagines either pursed lips and a furrowed brow or a peaceful tranquility painted across his face, features relaxed in contented concentration. There is a permanent sternness in the set of Solas’ jaw and the glint in his eye, and Emery finds far more satisfaction in seeing him calm than in catching him in the act.

Dorian is watching with a similar rapt attention, chin resting in one hand, and eventually a pair of chairs appear behind them. Likely one of Leliana’s scouts relegated to monitoring the Inquisitor. She collapses into it with a pleased hum, but her eyes do not leave Solas’s form.

“You’re quite the dilettante,” Dorian murmurs into his tea, taking a languid sip.

She whips her head to reprimand him, a finger pressed against her lips and eyes wide in reproach.

It starts a whispered argument, growing increasingly louder as Dorian’s comments grow more and more outrageous. Solas paints assiduously below, lip quirked as their bickering echoes in the rotunda.

* * *

The magister doesn’t look all that intimidating hunched over like that, the guards’ grip on his arms the only thing keeping him standing. He slumps, a man who lost the only thing he had left, a match flaring with unbridled flame and extinguished to a lightless and lifeless stub. He’s a timid thespian booed off-stage, a scholar whose lifelong work is shunned, a –

“You writing?” Tiny, or _the Iron Bull_ as he prefers, has a whisper that rumbles, the aside slipping out the corner of his mouth from where he sits next to Varric, a flagon in hand and an unfocused glaze in his eye.

“Do I look like I’m writing, Tiny? There’s a suspicious lack of quill and ink.”

Bright Eyes remarks on the severity – potential severity – of the magister’s crimes. It draws Varric’s attention back to her, sitting at full height with her legs crossed at the ankle and fingers twitching in a nervous jitter, the throne imposing and menacing behind her. She’s nervous, but a lot more so than she’s letting on. Varric feels a stab of pride lodge in his chest.

“You get this look on your face when you’re thinking out a story,” Tiny clarifies. “Jaw a little clenched, eyes narrowed.”

“Sure I do,” Varric retorts.

“Yeah, _you do_ ,” Tiny says.

Varric files the thought away for later, another set of tells to watch out for. Tiny already beats him at Wicked Grace too regularly.

The magister wheezes out a response, not loud enough for the hall to hear.

“So –” Tiny jerks his head in Alexius’s direction; Ruffles questions his submissiveness – “what’re you saying about him?”

Varric filters his thoughts into something coherent while Alexius grandstands about retribution and the oncoming storm and more dramatic bullshit. Bright Eyes leans forward, looking just as much at him as through him. Her eyes are searching, but for what? Remorse? Conviction? Malice?

“He’s a good tragic hero,” Varric decides.

“You call that guy a hero?”

“A _tragic_ hero, Tiny. None of the nobility or practicality, but twice as much crazy to make up for it. Add in a fatal flaw and some good intentions, and you end up with a decent enough tragedy.”

The assessment sits in the tense air, a hush having fallen over those gathered in the hall, awaiting their noble leader’s verdict. Varric spots Buttercup sitting in the rafters, one leg dangling off and swinging back and forth like a pendulum. She fingers the dagger in her lap.

Ruffles clears her throat.

“You swore to the mages that you’d help them,” Bright Eyes states. “I think you should uphold that promise in service to them under the supervision of First Enchanter Fiona.”

The room lets out of a collective breath.

“A headsman would have been kinder,” Alexius drawls.

Her face falls the moment he’s led away, the moment the spectators turn to each other to begin a lengthy discourse with all of the high-minded righteousness and none of the weight on their shoulders. She slouches, flexing the marked hand experimentally, frowning at it as though it too has offered its opinion on the matter.

The sound of splintering wood can be heard from above, probably Buttercup embedding her dagger into one of the beams. Tiny nods idly to himself, taking a swig of his cocoa. The Iron Lady’s heels click against the stone as she rises from her settee on the balcony, a calculated sound promising further discussion. Chuckles abandons his post in the doorway, lips pursed in thought. Hero slips out into the courtyard in an inconspicuous way that a man his size should not be able to pull off. Sparkler stays leaning forward on the balcony’s railing, head cocked pensively as Nightingale wordlessly retreats from his side. Ruffles watches the Inquisitor from her position a few feet away, writing without glancing at the page. The Seeker stands tall with her arms crossed over her chest, Curly next to her staring into the middle distance with his brow furrowed. Kid is nowhere to be found.

Varric observes all of this in a matter of seconds, notes it for when he’ll write it down later, with the obligatory embellishments and appropriate falsehoods. Like that Alexius cursed her and her kinsmen and the wooden throne she sat on instead of being dragged away with resigned compliance. And Sparkler wiped a single tear from his eye as he watched his former mentor retreat.

And the unwilling protagonist sat confident on her throne, not a trace of doubt to be found.

“You’re doing it again,” Bull says.

“I hate when I can hear the smugness in your voice,” Varric says, his jaw relaxing.

Bright Eyes’ gaze meets his own, and she musters up a half-hearted smile. Varric returns it.

_The Inquisitor, her judgement as decisive as the swing of her blade, stood from her throne and took purposeful strides towards the hall’s grand doors. Adventure awaited, and she had not a moment to waste._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Little plot, mostly drabbles. Hawke's here, and she's a competitive, inappropriate, well-meaning goof. Any feedback is loved and appreciated and bottled up for when I'm feeling down, even if you're just shaming me for not writing fast enough. Would also love to know which parts were your favourite! I really liked how Cole's and Varric's turned out this chapter. Hope you liked it!


	6. Travels

“Varric, I just – I can’t help but feel there’s a rift between us.”

“Me too, Bright Eyes,” he nods emphatically, “me too.”

Cassandra groans, throwing her head back, the green emitted from the rift above them giving her cheekbones a rather menacing highlight.

“You’re insufferable, the both of you,” she scolds, but it’s undercut by Emery’s giggles and Dorian’s wide grin. Varric is pleasantly smug, and he knows the Seeker well enough to see the hint of a smile, not in her lips, but in the slight pinching of crow’s feet around her eyes.

Dorian praises the two of them on their comedic timing as Emery closes the rift in the Mire, but the commendation is cut short when a corpse comes lumbering out of the water with its telltale grumbling.

* * *

 “You are not lying. You are simply avoiding the question.”

“Which is deceptive,” Emery argues. Leliana stands dutifully with her hands behind her back, her silhouette outlined by the light streaming into Madame de Fer’s parlour in the waning afternoon. Emery sits cross-legged on the white settee, elbows resting on her knees and chin supported by closed fists. 

“The Game fascinates you, darling, don’t think us stupid by pretending otherwise,” Vivienne interjects, clasping her hands in her lap. “It is strategy, with words and actions instead of blades. It is simply another style of fighting you must master in your leadership.”

Emery pulls at the fingers of her glove. “Yes, yes, it all makes for fascinating stories,” she murmurs, sounding every bit the affronted child circumstances forbid she be, “but that’s not the same as playing! People could die if I say the wrong thing.”

“That is already a reality you face,” Leliana reminds.

“It’s not the same,” she retorts, heaving out a sigh and running her fingers through her tangled hair.

“It will take practice,” Leliana continues, ignoring her impetuosity. “But we have weeks, and you’re better suited to the Game than you realize.”

It’s one of many half-truths she has told today; no one who wears their heart so boldly on their sleeve could ever succeed in the Grand Game, and Leliana has watched people far subtler than she fall onto daggers in shadowed corners of the palace quarters. But her weaknesses – her fear of conflict and responsibility, manifesting as affability and held tongues – those will provide the foundation necessary for Leliana to build from.

Emery’s hands retreat from her hair, her index finger twisting a stray lock. She looks to Vivienne, a plea in her eyes. “Is there any other way?”

“Not if you intend to live through the night, my dear.”

* * *

 “Perhaps one of the Orlesian ballgowns?”

“She’s far too petite for that, Lady Ambassador. A tulle skirt would swallow her whole.”

“Quite right, Madame. This one, then.”

Emery shudders at Vivienne’s approving hum as yet another dress is draped delicately over the folding screen in her room. They are enjoying themselves far too much on the other side, Josephine and Vivienne speaking as though she could not hear. It is not unlike Templar inspections, if inspections involved trying on ballgown after ballgown with the harsh mountain air stinging her skin, only to have her every physical flaw pointed out to her in a blatant fashion.

Maybe it isn’t like inspections at all.

“Terribly sorry to be so late – the Rowan’s Rose Varric procured was calling me,” Dorian’s voice sounds, followed by a cushioned fall that could only mean he’d sprawled out on her bed.

“Not you too!” Emery whines pitifully. Vivienne’s laughter tinkles through the air, Josephine giving an impatient huff of breath.

“The dress, if you please, Lady Inquisitor,” the Antivan calls, a warning in her tone. She had been on edge since the morning’s War Council, remiss to learn that the Inquisitor plans to travel to Crestwood in two days’ time to meet the Champion of Kirkwall’s Warden contact. This leaves spectacularly little time for her to get the Inquisitor fitted for a dress for the evening’s pleasantries, despite both her and Cullen’s assertions that she could wear the elaborate dress uniform Josephine is already pushing on the other attending members.

Josie is almost never short with her, often defending her from Leliana’s or Cullen’s impatience at meetings around the War Table. Were she alone, Emery is certain she would be tearing her hair out from stress.

It is with that thought that she gently pulls the newest dress off of the folding screen, feeling almost mollified with the whole affair at Josephine’s responding sigh of relief.

It’s a shimmering gold, Emery handling the cloth reverently on instinct despite the grief this impromptu fashion show has caused her. What it lacks in elaborate detailing, the glittering fabric makes up for tenfold, the jeweling around the neck and waist almost tame by comparison. She steps into it delicately, tightening the lowest ties on its frame before stepping onto the chopping block.

“Oh, yes,” Dorian purrs, rising from his spot on the bed to direct her towards a mirror. He takes her hair in his hands, arranges it to mimic an elegant up-do. Strands delicately frame her face, the remainder sitting in a makeshift bun atop her head, frizzy and unkempt but not unsightly.

“If we braid it along the sides…” Josephine murmurs.

“Yes, and I know just the earrings to match,” Vivienne agrees.

Dorian’s eyes watch her expectantly in the mirror, and it is only a moment before the other two cease their whispering, waiting for her reaction.

“It’s … nice,” she concedes, but the smile on her face betrays any disinterest she fought to exude.

“Huzzah!” Dorian shouts, dropping her hair to her shoulders and taking her hand, tugging her out in the center of the room and giving her an expert twirl. The skirt flares around her, the loft’s draft sending ripples through the fabric as she comes to a standstill.

She laughs in spite of herself.

 

The mark has begun to burn, only, it’s not painful so much as a swell of balmy heat, cozy, as though she’s holding it up to the fireplace in her room to warm. It sparks… happily. She can’t think of a better means of describing it.

“Onto shoes, then,” Josephine says, her quill flying across her page and making checkmarks as it went.

Emery groans, but the ardour is gone, ire dispersed with a golden twirl.

* * *

 Varric does not exaggerate when he describes her eyes as _sparkling_ , twinkling in the dim light of the cave as she sets her gaze upon Hawke’s Warden friend, Alistair.

“Are you _the_ Alistair? The Alistair fought the Archdemon with the Hero of Ferelden?” Bright Eyes says all in one breath, teetering back and forth on her heels.

“I need to change my name,” Alistair mutters in reply. “Yes, that was me. War, betrayal, darkspawn – all lots of fun, and made for excellent stories, I’m sure.”

Varric has indeed heard the stories, of an awkward yet witty young man, charming in his obliviousness and a force to be reckoned with on the battlefield. He’s heard of a naïve ex-Templar, fighting his way through a Blight with a band of misfits at his side, the love of his life leading them all.

This Alistair is not the man from the stories. He is wearier, the lines of his face pointing more towards a constantly furrowed brow than laughter. Varric can read the cynicism in the way his eyes dart to the cave entrance and size up the room’s patrons, vigilance in peace and what not. He is sorry to report that Alistair Therein, the plucky comic relief from the Hero of Ferelden’s tales, has become a killjoy.

“I’m sorry if I’ve offended, it’s just – ” Bright Eyes stops herself, absentmindedly pulling at the fingers of her glove. “It’s stupid, but I was visiting Denerim the year you and Warden Tabris came through, and the first time you did, months before the Landsmeet, you were in the marketplace, and I was playing with a wooden shield and sword.” She pauses, breathes out a laugh. “I called it ‘Wardens and Darkspawn’. I was – “

“Lashing out ... at a tree stump,” Alistair finishes, slowly sounding out each word as the memory returns to him, and Varric spots the hint of a smile crinkling around his eyes. “Green dress a couple sizes too big with sleeves that hung off of you. You stood up to here,” he says, hand about three feet off the ground. “I do remember you. You had quite the sword arm, if I’m not mistaken.”

There are other matters they need to be discussing if the impatient tapping of the Iron Lady’s foot is any indication, but Bright Eyes is too lost in beaming up at the brunette. “I had taken to calling myself Warden Trevelyan after that,” she murmurs. “My mother was most displeased.”

Alistair chuckles and leans against a stalactite. “Yes, if I remember correctly she asked if I had any titles.”

“Trying to find me a suitor, no doubt.”

“You were what, five? Six? I was over three times your age!” The warden says incredulously, a bit of a blush spreading over his face.

“My mother didn’t believe in procrastination,” she shrugs good-naturedly, mirroring his own casual bearing.

“Nor do I,” the Iron Lady interrupts. “I’m dreadfully sorry to hurry this reunion along,” she says, without sounding sorry at all, “but we must ask about the Wardens’ sudden disappearance.”

And just like that, the cheerful mood is displaced by their usual depressing urgency. Varric lets out a sigh as Alistair switches gears, describing the Calling with a grief that thickens the very air they breath. He paces; Bright Eyes visibly deflates, feet shoulder width apart and arms crossed over her chest in characteristic battle-stance. The Inquisitor and the Warden have replaced Emery and Alistair.

Heroes too often lose themselves to their own legends.

_Well, shit, that’s not bad. Better write that down._

* * *

 Josephine clucks her tongue and says “again” as the Inquisitor steps on her foot, the latest waltz from Halamshiral not coming as easily to her as they would have hoped. Though they were grateful the young Trevelyan’s table manners were up to par even after years of disuse in a Templar mess hall, other finer points of the conduct of nobility have eluded her under the Chantry education.  
  
Her gaze is fixed upon Josephine’s shoes, biting the inside of her cheek as they move across the main hall, having forcibly relocated the nobles out onto the grounds for the day. Maryden observes patiently from the corner, strumming her lute in an even rhythm to help the Inquisitor learn the timing. She smiles politely and occasionally hums along, but Josephine cannot tell whether her presence encourages or discourages the Inquisitor.  
  
The entire experience is no doubt mortifying, her hands clenching more tightly than is polite onto Josie’s hand and waist, ruffled fabric bunching underneath her grip, but its hard to feel regret when she so adamantly refused to be a part of this exercise.  
  
She was excited to meet the Empress and visit the Winter Palace when Josephine first mentioned it to her over afternoon tea (which generally consisted of the Inquisitor sitting on the corner of Josephine’s desk with a mug, Josephine working assiduously next to her and then downing her own drink in one gulp long after it had gone cold). Terrified, but excited. There was just as much wonder to be found in the tales of Orlesian masquerades as there was murder and mayhem, the elaborate gowns and more elaborate schemes dancing across the ballroom floor. She had been _excited._  
  
Josephine smiles to herself. The Game was truly captivating from an outsider perspective. One never considers just how much skill it takes to navigate its treachery, in both intellect and agility. Her face falls into a frown as she remembers the consequences one particular man faced when he was not nearly agile enough.  
  
The Inquisitor must see this as a sign of disapproval, and in hurrying to correct her footing she trips over Josephine’s slippers _again_. Only at the last second does she regain her footing and save Josephine from a nasty bruise to the head, supporting her weight in an ungraceful dip.  
  
To the untrained eye it must seem graceful, though, as when she is pulled back to a standing position by a very flustered and apologetic Inquisitor, Cullen stands in the doorway to the rotunda, noticeably impressed.

“Commander,” she greets, stepping back from an – if possible – even more embarrassed Inquisitor. The girl does not turn to look at him, instead toying with the fingers of her gloves.  
  
“Lady Ambassador.” He inclines his head, a smirk playing on his lips as he surely remembers their harried argument about the merits of formality in public. She had not taken kindly to being addressed as Josephine in front of the visiting Orlesian dignitary, who had hopped on such familiarity like a wolf to prey and began questioning her incessantly about the nature of their relationship.

It was an entire day wasted, filled with _these quarters will suffice, I suppose, but more importantly, what does Commander Rutherford use to style his hair_ and _the soldiers are impressive, yes, but how impressive is Ser Rutherford’s –_ well, she would rather not dwell on it again. Simply, Cullen had not taken her ire seriously until she repeated some of the more vulgar queries posed, and for days he blushed to the roots of his hair when he saw her.  
  
He was a quick learner though, unlike Lady Trevelyan at the moment.

“Something we can assist you with?” She takes the Inquisitor’s fiddling hands into her own with a gentle smile, watching the ever-fascinating and slightly depressing routine in which the girl conceals herself. The tremble in her hands stills, prompting Josephine to drop them, though the blush at the tips of her ears likely remains beneath the twist of her hair.  
  
“I require the Inquisitor’s presence in reviewing the plans for the week’s troop movements, Lady Ambassador. I’m afraid it cannot wait,” he states, whatever latent humour at her expense vanishing as his face takes on a graver quality. The Inquisitor spins on her heel to gage the severity of his request.

“Commander, I am certain that you are more than capable of handling these directives for an hour longer,” Josephine says, words genial but tone begetting frustration.

“I’ve already waited two, actually. Now if you’re done prancing – “

“Prancing?” Josephine breaks in, a warning in her voice. Cullen is no longer looking at her though, but instead giving a decidedly pointed look to the Inquisitor. Josephine at first assumes it is because she is the weaker link between the two, so to speak, but the youth does not cower under his gaze so much as search it.  
  
Josephine fights not to roll her eyes once the realization comes upon her.

“Oh, oh yes,” the Inquisitor says, doing a terrible impression of someone chagrined for an individual experiencing it not a minute ago. “I can’t believe I forgot such an important meeting. Integral, one might say.”  
  
“We’ll return promptly,” Cullen adds, having lost most of his pretense and looking far more a roguish schoolboy than a man his age has any right to.  
  
Josephine looks between the two, gives a sigh, and sends her away with a hurried wave of her hand. The Inquisitor wastes no time in following Cullen to his office, and Josephine tries not to laugh at the clearly forced expression of solemnity on his face. She’ll let the girl think herself clever for an afternoon, give Cullen a proper lashing for interrupting later, but most of all allow herself a well-deserved reprieve.  
  
_Maker_ , how her feet _ached_.

* * *

 “I thought you might like a break from her …”  
  
“Sadism?”  
  
Cullen snorts into his cup and then flushes at the sound, gently clearing his throat. “Yes, that would be an apt description.”

The actual plans he means to be discussing are laid out before them, so his master plan to get her away from Josephine wasn’t entirely a ruse. The Inquisitor skims through them as she nibbles at the remnants of his breakfast, which was already the leftovers from the meal he took in his quarters the night before. After his invitation to take a seat, she had taken the liberty of perching on the edge of his desk, much to his unspoken surprise and mild annoyance. Her legs dangle off the side as she glances between the written reports and the markers on the maps.  
  
He reads over his newly returned soldiers’ reports on a rogue mage in Crestwood, papers in one hand and a cup of highly distilled coffee in the other, pacing absentmindedly.  
  
The drink’s black as night and bitter as raw elfroot, but it’s the best means he has of keeping himself awake; the telltale throbbing at the base of his neck signals an oncoming lyrium headache, and more importantly the increasingly terrifying nightmares that follow. His hand shakes a bit as he takes another sip, though he’s unsure if it’s the sickness or the caffeine in his veins.

They continue in merciful silence, a quality he has found he appreciates in the time he has spent with the Inquisitor. Sometimes she falls victim to mindless chatter to still her nerves, for which he cannot nor will he blame her, but the majority of the time she is perfectly happy to sit in companionable silence and read, speaking only when necessary. It’s a pleasant change of pace from working with some of his younger recruits.  
  
On rare occasions, she talks to Cullen not in rambles or in carefully constructed questions of strategy, but conversationally. It never ceases to take him by surprise.  
  
“I always liked the Game. Or, tales of it,” she says, not looking up from her reading materials. Cullen starts at the sound, a bit of coffee sloshing out of his cup onto the floor. It seeps into the crevices in the stone. “It was glamorous and exciting and – and –”

“Distant?” He finishes.  
  
“Exactly!” She says with a snap of her fingers. She moves further onto his desk, uttering a quiet thank you as he stops his pacing to move a stack of papers out of the way, giving her more space, though the gesture is mostly to keep her from causing them damage. They took _years_ to sort through.  
  
“It’s one thing to read about it like it’s some sort of – I don’t know” – she wiggles her fingers in an attempt to illustrate whatever she’s thinking – “imaginary, clandestine adventure, and another to be living it.”  
  
“It is dangerous,” he acknowledges. He’s only half listening, now trying to make sense of Jim’s unnecessarily loopy handwriting.  
  
“I can do danger,” she says immediately, then thinks better of it, putting her papers down and crossing her legs at the ankles. “I mean, I’d rather not have to, but at this point with all the demons and avalanches, I’ve come so close to dying enough times that it shouldn’t faze me anymore.” She huffs a nervous laugh.

The look in her eyes is distinctly other worldly in that she isn’t staring at his bookcase so much as beyond it. Cullen has stopped his pacing again at her fading volume, the way she trailed off catching his attention more so than her words, not to mention the fact that this is the most she’s ever said to him in one sitting.

“You aren’t –” he starts, then stops, his teeth clicking together as he tries to work out his response. “It’s alright to be afraid. You’d be stupid not to be.”  
  
He cringes at his own words, at how harsh it sounds, but it brings the Inquisitor back from whatever trance she had fallen into just the same. Her lips are pursed thoughtfully as she picks up her mug and sips her tea.  
  
“I know,” she says after a silence, and he can tell that she only knows it in the most superficial of senses, that she carries a familiar delusion about fear equating to weakness. She pauses again before leafing through the reports in her free hand and then shrugging noncommittally.

“I’m not built to be a dancer anyhow, blocky as I am,” she continues, deflecting, stretching out her arms to accentuate the point. “And I can’t even begin to comprehend all this double-speak Lady Vivienne is trying to get through to me. It’s not even _lying,_ not that I’m much good at that either, but it’s worse. It’s like I’m supposed to be telling the truth while also not telling the truth. What’s the point of that?”

This is again the most the Inquisitor has ever said to him not specifically regarding Inquisition maneuvers. He imagines it has something to do with not having seen most of her usual crowd due to Josephine’s ‘nobility training regiment’ and Josephine herself being a part of the problem, so he tries to wrack his brain for something Varric or Sera would say before he realizes he has a perfectly snarky response of his own.  
  
“Orlesians love to hear themselves speak. They’re deliberately vague and long-winded just so they can relish the sound of their accents while they drink over-priced wine and moan about their clothing not having enough layers.”  
  
She’s smiling at him with an air of surprise. “You have a very high opinion of the Orlesians,” she notes sarcastically, taking another sip of her tea.  
  
“Not nearly as high as the Orlesians themselves.”  
  
She scoffs mid-drink, that incredibly _expert_ maneuver causing her to choke. Cullen finds himself torn between mild exasperation and  laughter at her ensuing coughing fit. He hands her a spare handkerchief he keeps in the upper drawer of his desk, and she takes it gratefully. The reports in her lap fall in her convulsions, but her coughs have largely dissipated by the time the knock comes.  
  
“Inquisitor?” Josephine’s voice calls from the other side of his door. The Inquisitor freezes, looking ridiculously like a child whose been caught after curfew, and Cullen struggles not to laugh again.  
  
“Inquisitor?” Josephine repeats.  
  
“Oh, damn it all,” she huffs, moving off his desk with her papers now scattered about the floor. Cullen crouches to clean up the mess, but looks up as she stops her advance halfway to the door.  
  
“Can I hide on the roof?” she whispers.  
  
“What?”  
  
“The roof. Can I hide there until she’s gone?”  
  
Cullen is at a loss for words momentarily, coming back to his senses as Josephine knocks once more, persistent as ever. Practical man that he is, and to some extent fearing the Antivan woman’s wrath, he gives the Inquisitor a deadpan look. “No, you most certainly cannot.”

The Inquisitor sags, still facing away from him, but nevertheless marches dutifully to the door. She leaves with Josephine as requested, but not before looking over her shoulder to stick her tongue out at him.  
  
Cullen sighs. He’s shaking his head as he organizes the fallen papers into a stack, but it does little to detract from the warm smile he can’t seem to rid himself of. It does eventually fade when his mild headache grows severe, but it was nice to have a moment of peace just the same.

* * *

A young elven girl, a mage, sits cross-legged on the Circles stone floors with a heavy book in her lap. She is nameless, and though her face is visible, there is something indistinct about her, her features somehow clear to him yet beyond coherent description. Her only identifiable markers are the pointed ears and a pair of violet eyes, studiously taking in the page before her.

“I barely remember her,” Emery says. Here, everything maintains a quality of semi-opaqueness save the two of them. She is solid, but the Templar armor that has formed over her breeches and tunic is not, glittering with an unnatural air. “She was shorter than me, definitely. Hair could have been black or brown.”

“Why is she so prominent in your mind?” Solas asks. The memory, contrary in that pieces of it are vague and undefined while others – the scent of ink and parchment, the chill that creeps in from the ajar window – are in perfect clarity. The anchor’s magic must hone in on certain parts, and allow her to give that which has been forgotten a partial form. “What did someone so unremarkable do to gain your recognition?”

She crouches in front of the girl, different variations of the stranger’s face overlapping and giving the illusion of her vibrating in place. “It wasn’t what she did, but what _I_ did. I defended her.” The sword emblem across her chest flashes, becomes spattered with blood.

“You risked your safety to defend her, yet you cannot remember her name nor her appearance.” Solas does not sound skeptical, only curious as he watches dents form in her armor, those from the blows of fists, boots, shields, and swords.

“It wasn’t important,” she says, breathing becoming constricted as the armor warps around her. “It didn’t really matter who she was when I stepped in front of her. She needed someone’s help. And I was there.”

“It would do well for you to ask who you’re defending before you jump in front of another’s sword,” he scolds. The scene disappears altogether, shifts until he sees blurred figures of the two of them, Solas wrenching her wrist and keeping her upright as they close the first rift at Haven.

“I haven’t really had much choice in the matter lately.” Emery rises from her crouch, coming to stand next to him. The girl in her semi-permanent state reappears before Solas can comment. “They called her a knife-ear. I,” she stops, cocking her head. “I let them. The first time.”

Her armor melts away. She is remarkably smaller without it, and without the bulky and misshapen metal, the tension in her shoulders and the twitch of her jaw become visible. Solas watches the scene change in response, the girl strewn over the floor and a vision of Emery kneeling over her, armor dented and splotched with blood. Her hands shake.

“I want to wake up now, Solas,” Emery says, her voice tight at his side. He does not do her disservice of looking at her, of seeing the tears that no doubt line her cheeks. He places his hand on her shoulder.

“Wake up, da’len.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know that feel when you think NAH I GOTTA MAKE IT LONGER AND INCLUDE EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER OTHERWISE THE CHAPTER ISN'T FINISHED and then six months pass? Yeah, that's where I'm at. Stopped trying to force it and just threw up what I currently have, hope you all like it despite the lack of certain faces. Sorry it's half the length, but that's what happens when you realize your shit is very long-winded and needs to tone it down.


	7. Halamshiral

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two chapters? In one day?
> 
> It's called giving up on including all the major players, kids. I'll make it up to you later.

“Good luck, yeah?” Sera calls to the retreating carriage, Quizzie sticking her head out the side of the thing to mime tying a noose and offing herself with it. Sera sniggers in response, Blackwall only just keeping a grin from stretching his cheeks. Cassandra snorts.

“Bring me back some of those little cakes!” Sera continues. “And steal me one of them fancy masks – the posher the better! I’ve got this great idea with a pig and a set of trousers – “

“She’s too far off to hear you now,” Blackwall interrupts. She elbows him in the side none too gently, even if he’s right. Quizzie gets pulled back into the carriage as it takes a turn down the path, probably Josie torturing her with some more surprise questions about who’s uncle is screwing whoever down at the Orlesian money-fest.

“Think she’ll pick Celene?” Blackwall asks.

“Probably,” Bull says. “She’ll try not to make waves if she can avoid it.”

“She’s a solider. She will not discount Gaspard entirely,” Cassandra adds, certain as ever but only really convincing herself.

“She will,” Bull grins. “You can hope she won’t though, if it helps you sleep better.”

The group disperses, Solas off to do squicky magic things and Bull to the tavern, Cassandra probably running the place in Quizzie’s stead. Her and Blackwall watch the carriage until it dips over the mountain pass, beyond where they can keep an eye on her.

“So,” she says, sounding out the word, “Broody beard. Got a pair of trousers you aren't using?”

* * *

She looks breathtaking as she frees herself from Ruffles’s well-meaning clutches, holding the Antivan’s gloved hands in her own and saying something Varric is too far away to make out. The orchestral strings from within the Winter Palace swell and dissipate, the dim light from within casting coloured shadows through stained glass windows. The moonlight seems to congregate around her form, dancing across the shimmering fabric of her dress and the ornate jeweling twisting in her hair.

But it’s still Bright Eyes underneath it all, and if he squints he can see her in silvered armor, muck and dirt smeared on her cheeks, or sitting across from him in the main hall, giving dramatic readings of his letters from the Carta. The same shy kid below the glamour. It shines through a little in her posture, her confidence seeming to dissipate with each step away from Ruffles, like she can only bloom in full force when next to one of her trusty companions.

Varric still doesn’t know why she bothered to bring him along; the Iron Lady was an obvious choice, her shrewd gaze scrutinizing each guest they pass with a deceptive smirk, and though Sparkler turns more than a few heads, he at least seems at home surrounded by murderous intrigue and pretentious nobility. Varric’s books don’t even sell that well in Orlais, so Andraste only knows what the Inquisitor was thinking when she requested he get fitted for one of these ridiculous dress uniforms.

“You look like a million sovereigns, your Inquisitorialness,” he says with a wink as she comes to stand by his side. A gracious smile is plastered across her face, pulling her lips too thin and crinkling her eyes at the corners. It nearly looks genuine; Nightingale must’ve spent hours drilling her on it.

“I think I’m about to vomit,” she intones.

“Try not to get any on the dress,” he says, linking arms with her. “Ruffles might just combust, right here, in the palace gardens.”  
  
“Blood and guts all across the fresh peonies? She’d never live down the scandal.”  
  
“She’d come back from the dead to reprimand you for portraying the Inquisition _unfavourably_ ,” he cringes at the last word, drawing a smile from her.

Gaspard approaches with an exaggerated bow, one hand across his front and the other curled in a fist behind his back. Bright Eyes curtseys in response with a gentle nod, dropping Varric’s arm so that the Grand Duke can press a kiss to the back of her gloved hand.

He’s smarmy and arrogant, but it’s that brand of smarmy inherent to Orlesian nobility, so no warning bells go off as Gaspard leads her into the palace exterior. Gasps and furtive whisperings erupt amongst the guests at the sight of her, Varric catching snippets of _Andraste’s chosen_ and _out of style_ amid the buzz.

He lingers behind the others, taking in the grandeur of the palace for posterity. It’s opulent, certainly, but he struggles to find the right word to describe the haunting feeling creeping up his bones as his eyes settle upon the two armed statues, gaze turned inward to the tower as though the threat lay inside. Ominous, maybe. Foreboding.

He steps into the garden slowly, savouring the ambience. If he closes his eyes, and he does, the hum and the clink of glasses isn’t much unlike the sounds that hung around the Hanged Man; if the shouting was inflected with the Free Marcher brogue and the haughty sniffs were the blows of a fistfight, Varric doubts he’d be able to tell the difference.  
  
“The Inquisition sent a dwarf? Preposterous!”

Varric sighs.

It’s going to be a long night.

* * *

Leliana is a master of the Grand Game, and of that there is not, nor will there ever be, any room for doubt. She both loves and reigns over its subtleties and allusions, veiled point and counter-point. Its all-encompassing subterfuge is a thrilling delicacy that her machinations from Skyhold’s rookery only ever graze.

Despite all of this, her proclivity for posturing and doublespeak, she cannot keep the poison from her gaze as she addresses Comte Chantral, her words and voice honey-sweet while she places a delicate hand on the Inquisitor’s lower back and guides her away. The Comte is affronted, dismayed at her interference, but his displeasure is a necessary evil in order to rescue the Inquisitor from his wandering eyes and, judging from the amount of champagne he’s imbibed, the Comte’s later wandering hands.

Emery had been polite to a fault, though Leliana suspected it had more to do with youthful naivety than heeding Josephine's careful training. Her obliviousness could be mistaken as coy, even coquettish.

Leliana only says, “be wary of your drink, Inquisitor.”

Emery’s eyes widen before she nods purposefully in response, almost maintaining the well-practiced smile. It nearly smooths the worry in her brow, but only just. She pulls at the delicate opera gloves, marked hand fluttering about before settling at her collarbone, as though to draw attention from the column of her neck. She surveys the ballroom with keen yet unassuming eyes, the enamored glance of a young paramour to Halamshiral’s decadence. Leliana would praise her on a part well-played, but it is less feigning and more highlighting; her enthralment is authentic, and as instructed, she is drawing upon it to mask her discomfort.

It cannot still the nervous dance of her fingers against her throat.

Leliana picks a glass of something translucent and red off a server’s tray, passing it to the Inquisitor to occupy her hands.  “They will watch regardless. Simply be mindful.”

A pair of champagne glasses clink to their left, the last of Emery’s troubles smoothing from her face. She has improved with their rigorous teachings, Leliana notes with no small amount of pride. Then, out of the corner of her eye, she spots a pair of hideously elaborate shoes.

Oh, the Inquisitor _must_ hear this.

* * *

The Inquisitor appears in a flurry of golden fabric, pardoning the nobility that swarm him. Their comments and touches are most unwelcome, a fact he has been vocal about, yet the Comtesse’s hand retains its claw-like grip on his forearm, her rictus dead-eyed behind the sumptuous serpentstone mask.

The Inquisitor had been quiet the entire ride up to the palace, not uncharacteristically so, but her usual rapt attentiveness had been stolen away to daydreaming. She spoke when spoken to, but her answers were vague and lacked her good humour. He had chalked it up to nerves.

He was no stranger to the feeling, after all.

Now she seems more wary than bashful, but still flushes pleasantly as one of several Marquises hovering about him compliments her hair. The Grand Enchanter had spent hours on it, Cullen remembers.

The Comtesse still has not moved, nails pinching in the illustrious black fabric of his dress uniform. Cullen is both grateful and embarrassed to be rescued by a teenage girl as Emery links their arms and directs him towards the balcony, a floaty laugh escaping her throat as she teases the Comtesse.

“I’ll only borrow my Commander for a few short moments, my lady. Then his good looks are yours to fawn over for the rest of the evening.”

Cullen flushes for a number of reasons at the interaction and gives what he hopes to be an appropriate apology. This is not his area of expertise.

He expects them to stop a short few feet away, but she more or less marches them forward to the grand windows at the end of the hall, stopping just outside Gaspard’s enclave. She gives the ballroom an appraisal, a grin on her face, and then turns to him, her back to the revelry. Her strained smile melts into a frown, not mournful but angry, adjusting the hem of her gloves.

“Thought you might need a break. I hadn’t realized you would suffer their … intrigues as well.”

“As well?” His eyes darken. If someone had done anything untoward to the Inquisitor… he doubts any member of their inner circle would let it stand. Or, rather, let _them_ stand.

“It’s nothing I can’t handle. Josephine informed me weeks ago of the numerous marriage proposals coming to Skyhold since Haven,” the Inquisitor sighs. “It was funny at the time.”

“Funny?”

“Faceless nobles, clamouring to mount the social hierarchy? It was almost like home,” she says, somehow both bitter and wistful at once. “Now it’s just inconvenient. Can’t take a step without some Comte grabbing my wrist, asking for a blessing or my lineage.” She brings a hand to her cheek, rubbing at her jaw. “I think I’ve sprained my face from smiling.”

“Inquisitor,” he intones, amazed to find a smile pulling at his lips in _Orlais_ , of all places, “did you call me away just to complain?”

“Well,” the hand massaging her jaw moves top cup the back of her neck, the humble gesture woefully incongruent with the gold fabric swirling around her ankles. “No. Not originally. Anything to report?”

“I’ve been told numerous times that I’m ‘frankly edible,’ if that’s of any concern.”

She snorts, hand coming up immediately to cover her face in mortification. If there is anything good to come from the nobles’ pestering, it is to see her recovering from whatever has dimmed her spirits. The drone of the crowd swells, Orlesian and Common overlapping into a dull roar, and Cullen is immensely grateful for a reprieve from its chaos, to find that some semblance of rationality remains in the palace yet. Her laughing eyes narrow suddenly, gloved hand falling to her side.

“I’ve been, uh, reciting benedictions to keep sane, if you’d like to try it,” she offers. “But for now, I think you’ll have to return to your hoard of admirers. The Empress’s ladies in waiting are making their way over. If we both move now, we might be able to escape them.”

He wonders if she’s treating the evening like a battle for his benefit or hers. “I can fend for myself, my lady,” he assures, feeling only slightly coddled.

She shrugs in a _suit yourself_ sort of gesture, her artificial smile resituating on her face. “I have no doubt. Fight well, Commander.”

And with that she disappears in a whirl of gold into the crowd, parrying and sidestepping florid gowns as she makes her way to the vestibule.

“Commander,” an Orlesian accent lilts, a palm curling around his bicep.

Cullen suppresses a sigh as he bows graciously. _Blessed are the righteous, the lights in the shadow…_

* * *

She navigates the ballroom floor wonderfully, Josephine notes with delight, her steps not faltering for a second as she leads Duchess Florianne through the dance.  
  
Her words do not carry across the room, what with the music and click of heels against marble tile, but whatever she says seems to garner disapproval from those around. Josephine pinches the bridge of her nose as Yvette coos. The Inquisitor has certainly improved her footwork and her forced smiles, but courtly etiquette or rather, intrigue, still escapes her.

The couples disperse as the music grows more intense, off to mingle or refill their glasses, yet the Inquisitor and the Duchess continue to maneuver gracefully until they are the only pair left. Their steps have a deliberate quality to them, and underneath, something undeniably lethal.  
  
The Game has been likened to a dance before, but this is the first Josephine has seen it actually played as such.  
  
The Duchess speaks and it takes on a sinister quality, her grip on the Inquisitor's shoulder a fraction too tight and her mischievous smile seeming to accentuate the points of her canines. The Inquisitor stumbles once, just once, and Josephine loses her grip on her champagne glass. It falls over the balcony seemingly at half speed, spinning in the air, its elegant glass shattering into pieces on the ballroom floor below.  
  
Josephine is leaning over the railing without having realized, and with the final clash of cymbals her eyes dart to the Inquisitor, masterfully lowering the Duchess in a dip. The music stops abruptly, the room filled with gasps, and then it resumes, serenading the couple as they finish the final steps and separate with mutual curtsies.  
  
Josephine finds herself already approaching the Inquisitor, Yvette’s floating giggle calling after her and poking fun at her so-called butter fingers. The Inquisitor rushes off the dancefloor and up the stairs, where Cullen and Leliana already await.  
  
Josephine supresses the need to fret over the girl once she is within reach, to still the tremble in her hands that only the most observant would take notice of, but she cannot. Not while the Game is still in play.

* * *

 

The Inquisitor has held herself well the majority of the evening, and Vivienne is genuinely impressed that she has lasted as long as she has. Sadly, as with all fortuitous things, this too must come to an end.

“Enough!” The Inquisitor barks. She faces away from the squabbling nobility, hands braced on the railing and staring into the garden below. Vivienne suspects her gaze cannot help but linger on the late duchess’s corpse, sentimental girl that she is. She raises her head to stare at the horizon, back straightening and breathing evening out as she steps away from the barrier. She restrains herself as instructed, but it takes great effort, hands fisted for another moment longer before unclenching and coming to rest at her sides.

The veneer of calm is by no means convincing. As she turns, her fingers twitch and bunch into the fabric of her dress, and though the intricate golden leaves adorning the upper frame of her mask hide the tension in her brow, her distaste for those standing before her – Vivienne including herself among them - is broadcast nonetheless. She may have well have shouted it from the spires for all her training did her.

She does not meet their eyes as she removes the mask from her face, and though Vivienne is accustomed to the weariness that plagues her, Gaspard flinches imperceptibly in the corner of her vision. He is no stranger to the Game, but it is always jarring to see that there is something abjectly _wrong_ about the expression the Inquisitor wears, something incongruent with the demeanor one would expect from a girl so young.

“I don’t understand you,” she sighs. “I don’t think I ever will, and to be honest, I don’t want to.” Her golden dress is torn up the side, blood splattered over her clavicle, and as she rakes a bloodied glove through her delicately coiffed hair, ravaging the careful stylings, it displays the honesty not of a petulant child, but that of a being above such frivolities, long past the point of giving care to the Orlesian courts’ arbitrary rules and perceived slights. Vivienne almost finds herself in admiration of it.

“The three greatest minds of your nation, and you squander it for the sake of this _Game_. Did you learn nothing from what happened to Ferelden, how much was lost because they played politics in a time of crisis? How can you foster war with the threats that face us? How can you justify killing allies? How –” She stops, the escalating urgency in her voice coming to a halt. “How can you be so – so _blind_ to what’s at stake? It’s not just your livelihoods or your legacies, it’s _people_. _Your_ people. I don’t understand.”

The rage she tapped into diminishes for a moment, and again her expression is foreign on her face, a child-like confusion twisted with regret. “I don’t understand,” she repeats. “And I,” she startles as if just suddenly realizing where she stands, looking at each of the leaders of a nation in turn. “I will see to it that you do better.”

“Your,” the Empress pauses, cautious and dallying as ever, “ _optimism_ may be misplaced, Inquisitor."

The girl's anger flares once more, but it is not a youth’s defiance that spurs her forward towards Celene in two long strides, nor a respect for the Empress’s position that restrains her from advancing further. She marches with a general’s air of finality, and it is not a retreat when she stops, but the drawing of a line in the metaphorical sand.

 “Set your personal differences aside for the good of Orlais, or deal with the consequences on your own.  Your radiance.” She adds the title as an afterthought, and it bares none of the reverence it is meant to convey. Vivienne restrains a cat-like smile as the girl stalks back towards to the balcony, leaning over the supports with her mask dangling precariously from her fingers.

Gaspard lets out a hearty chuckle while Celene gawks, the Grand Duke seemingly as unconcerned with the Game as the young Inquisitor. “ _Une fille téméraire, ma cousine, mais non?”_

“ _Une fille qui a l’air d’en avoir marre, grand duc,”_ the Inquisitor says with a shake of her head. There is silence as she replaces the ornate mask over the bridge of her nose, and though Vivienne could have spotted the tremble in her hands from a mile away, she for once does not think lesser of her for it.

“The nobility await your address, your excellency,” Vivienne says once the pause carries on too long. It is time the girl be given a moment to herself after all the prodding they have subjected her to.

Or not, as Celene’s calculating gaze turns to the beleaguered Inquisitor anew. “Would you join us in doing so, Inquisitor?” Celene asks.  
  
A tightening in her shoulders. “Do I have a choice?” The Inquisitor asks. She does not wait for the answer, however, already spinning on her heel and moving towards the doors to the ballroom. She gives Vivienne a fearful glance as she passes, and though the look she responds with is not encouraging, per say, it at least promises her the night will end in resolution, one way or the other.

“ _Téméraire et plus maligne que vous penseriez,”_ Gaspard compliments again, following her lead. Celene and Briala do the same, Vivienne watching her pupil march into the lion’s den, now with full confidence that she will return from it unscathed.

* * *

Dorian gives a curt nod to the occult advisor before making his way out onto the balcony, the Inquisitor leaning on the railing with her head hung low. A spatter of the Duchess’s blood stains her gloves.

“Some ancient dowager was looking for you,” he calls, a knowing smile unwittingly crossing his face at her telltale surprised jolt. “Had two of her sons in tow. I told her we were cousins and that seemed to do the trick.”

He sidles up next to her, giving the grounds an appraising glance. “You can thank me later.”

She breathes out a laugh. He lowers his head to gage her expression, but it’s shielded by the hair spilling out from her braids, dislodged in the skirmish.

A beat passes. He asks, in a low voice, “how are you faring?”

She shakes her head, and as she rises to look out on the gardens, Dorian makes out the glint of dried tears on her cheeks.

“Exasperated and overwhelmed,” she confesses, a grimace spreading over her face. “If I just could have made the Duchess see reason – “

“There you go, thinking you can come to everyone’s rescue again.” She opens her mouth to argue but he silences her, a steadying hand on her shoulder. “Look at it this way: the woman planning political assassination was thwarted at the cost of her own life. Some people make bad choices. You can’t allow yourself to dwell on them indefinitely. And more than that, you managed a public truce between three individuals who despise each other. That is no small feat.”

“It won’t last.” She shrugs noncommittally, gaze dropping to the splatters of red against the white of her opera gloves. It’s all terribly poetic, Dorian muses. She tugs at the fingers absentmindedly, the music picking up in the hall behind them.

“You know, I have just the idea.” He bends over at the waist, proffering his hand with a raised brow. “Would you care for a dance, Lady Trevelyan?”

She gawks at him for a moment, her rather adorable expression of shock quickly fading into a droll smile. She rolls her eyes.

“Now, now, there’s no need for that. I’m a wonderful dancer,” he scolds teasingly.

She makes no move to take his hand, her smile growing drier before softening into something warm and familiar. She ducks her head, looking at the silver toes of her shoes peeking out from the dress’s hem. He thinks he hears a sigh, but it could just be the sudden rush of the wind, fading just as quickly as it came.

He means to straighten up and apologize for insensitivity, but then she peels the gloves off in a quick motion, tossing them unceremoniously into the shrubbery below. Her right hand delicately takes his, the marked hand, dimmed to a subtle green crackle beneath her palm, resting on his shoulder.

If she steps on his toes in her wandering thoughts, he makes no mention of it.

* * *

“ _Bright crimson tinting spun gold and cobblestone. A life laid waste to, a life beyond saving, a life with tiny shoes and gaps in teeth and the rush of wind as you gallop down the hillside.”_

Cole sits at the foot of the illustrious four-poster bed, fingers fidgeting with the silk tassels on one of many pillows. Emery sleeps in a frenzy, legs tangled in the sheets and tossing back and forth, louder and louder in his head. Her face is scrunched like she’s tasted something sour.

“ _Treachery, lecherous smiles. They want something. They want to claw away and snatch the shreds up. The blood wants to leave. It sings.”_

She’s sweating. Her breaths come quick.

“ _The eagle soars until it meets the cliff face. The feathers fall to ash. Eternity towers above, shaking the essence in his fist. Stumbling and skittering like a foal, she kneels before forgiveness and finds no way forward. Lightning sets the orchard ablaze, blossoms to embers in the breeze, smoke clogging her throat.”_

She shoots up, hands grasping at her neck with big, wheezing breaths. Her nail catches skin, a droplet of blood pooling on her neck. It trails down to the white of her billowing undershirt. The fabric doesn’t like the stain.

“I don’t know how to help them,” Cole says.

She jumps, the knife she keeps beneath her pillow appearing in her hand. She drops it, and then she melts away, but not all the way.

“Cole,” she says, quiet again. “I didn’t know you came with us.” The scare is in her eyes and around her mouth, he thinks. He doesn’t know how to feel her when she’s quiet, but Varric’s tried to explain it to him. Big eyes and thin lips. Fear.

“I don’t like it here. They have faces underneath their faces,” he tells her.

Emery tilts her head, eyes pinched tight, then she nods. “I hate the masks too. I think I’ve had a lifetime’s fill of Orlesian finery in the past week.” She stretches her neck, cracks like oak branches.

“You were crying in your sleep. In the dream. I can help you. I can make you forget.”

She watches him the way Dorian watches the pages of a book. Her eyes pinch again, then widen, then her head shakes the thoughts away like snowfall off the shoulders of a cloak, and then she watches him again. Her hands miss their gloves.

The quiet is loud when she fractures it. “You could?”

He appears in front of her, hand hovering over the crownless crown of her head. “Yes.”

He hears a song with muddled words and feels the warmth of someone’s arms around him, a twinkle of laughter in the air.

“Do it,” she says.

He sees the fountain of blood and the murder of crows, the dull shine of muddied silver. A scream cuts off as the leaf falls from the branch. Streaks of green are painted on a canvas of clouds, a globe on the turtle’s back, unknowing and unwilling and unprepared. The inevitable tastes of rose wine and limestone. There is a crevice the light does not find, and the emptiness breeds. The light pours from his fingers, but the abyss is not breeched, and he is falling, falling with her, the nothing suddenly everything.

Cole crouches in the corner, and she grabs his wrists to stop the shaking. He looks into her, at her. Her hands are warm. The mark burns him.  
  
“I can’t fix it. I can’t make it go away,” he gasps. “The hurt needs to be healed, it begs. I _can’t_ fix it.”

“Cole,” she says, and her fear pours into him, floods him. “It’s okay. I can handle it.”

“You’re lying.”

“Yes,” she grants, laughs, harsh and compassionate in concurrence. “But I can survive it.”

He doesn’t understand it, but she holds his wrists until the shaking stops and her eyes grow strong in a field of uncertainty. She goes from crouching to sitting in front of him, cross-legged, the cold of stone beneath them creeping up their legs like vines.

“You help, Cole,” she says. The truth is there, but it is half of the chapter, the other pages damaged by water and left to bleeding ink.

“The hurt is still there.”

“So am I.” She waits for him to see, and he watches a man write a letter to a widow while revelry roars in the streets, and the sea washes away a clod in the sweep of its tides, and the girl walks on her twisted ankle with an arm looped around her brother’s neck.

“You wade in the darkness so the rose can bloom. The soil speaks in different tongues.”

Emery is asleep again, head lolling back against the wooden dresser. He knows now to wake her when the thrashing starts, but the night becomes a gentle one. He does not hear her until the morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cole's part become much longer than I intended but hey, he's a fun character to write. I think I've realized that some of these relationships are going to be less meaningful or relevant than others, but I'll try to give each as much time as I can. Hope you enjoyed this bit, and let me know what you liked and what you didn't! How else am I going to learn?

**Author's Note:**

> Know that my schedule is random and haphazard because of university applications and the like, but lemme know if you want me to continue! I'm also open to taking requests for scenarios since I'm writing in this drabble format. Thanks for reading!


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